25 Departures
by YellowRosesAndHearts
Summary: 25 things that happened in the year before the pilot, that established the relationships among the agents. Some Jane/Lisbon chapters.
1. Handsome

_**A/N: So I primarily write one-shots. But I kind of wanted to do a multi-chapter thing, so I decided to do my own little version of the drabble series. This is going to be 25 drabbles/one-shots that lead up to the pilot, so this is before the show starts. So Van Pelt doesn't appear, for obvious reasons. I made up my own time line for this, so it could be entirely wrong, but I decided that by the pilot Jane has been working with the CBI for about a year. I also decided that Rigsby doesn't start for a few months after Jane, so he doesn't exist yet. I don't know why I decided that, but he'll turn up within the first ten chapters. Alot of it is Jane/Lisbon, because I love them, but about half of the chapters won't be. Which for me, I swear, is cutting back. : )**_

_**This particular chapter is Lisbon meeting Jane. I kind of figured that she would be struck by his being attractive the first time she meets him, even if she eventually doesn't think about it, because she doesn't know him yet, all she has to go on is the physical. And the physical is hot.**_

_**Note the dates. I like reviews. Sorry about the long A/N.**_

***

_Late-August, 2007_

Jane was handsome.

It was an reasonable and clear observation, and it didn't bother her to think it. Lisbon was a red-blooded, heterosexual female, and in some objective way it didn't escape her that the new team consultant was attractive. He was wearing a gray suit and a matching vest, which was unusal in the California heat, but it seemed to fit into what she knew of the man. The charming smile and expensive-smelling cologne did not. According to Minelli, the man had an eerie ability to figure out incredibly private things about a person simply by observing them. It was this fact more than any other that made her uncomfortable to meet him.

He reached out and took her hand for a lingering shake in both of his; he looked for her eyes, and she gave them, albeit reluctantly. The way he looked into her face—wide-eyed and probing, seeming to absorb bits of her, was surprisingly and frighteningly intimate; there and gone in the next second, replaced by the dancing blue eyes.

He said his name was Jane, and there was a pause, in which she was probably supposed to give her name but didn't, her voice somehow caught behind her teeth.

"So, you're my boss," he said, inclining his head.

She was having trouble finding her words.

"It'll be fun," he continued.

The time came again for her to say something, and then passed. Again.

"That's all I've got," he said, suddenly laughing uncomfortably. "So maybe you could—I don't know, reciprocate."

Lisbon was feeling the unease of having her expectations dashed, something which always messed with her. She had never been good at adjusting to the unexpected, and after thirty-plus years of life, she doubted that would change. It had nothing to do with Jane's exceeding attractiveness: she had been around good-looking men before, and she would be around them again. Really, if she was being honest, even Cho was easy enough on the eyes, but Cho was not Jane, who was all suave and frills and spicy cologne that contrasted sharply with her, and with every other cop she had ever worked with.

Mercifully, her voice worked its way back into her throat, and regained its place in her mouth. "I'm Agent Lisbon."

He tilted his head to the side, trying to look into her again. She found an excuse to look off into the distance when he said, "Lisbon. Is there a first name that goes with that?"

She could feel her eyebrows scrunching together, the consternation in her forehead. "Why don't you ask around, Jane? It's irrelevant."

He smiled at her, completely unoffended, and promised her he'd do just that. It was a different grin than she'd seen from him so far—suddenly wicked, devilish, like a little boy. "And don't worry," he said. "You'll stop being so nervous around me after a while. You'll get used to it." He winked at her, a rougish wink.

For anything, she wanted to ask him what exactly he was referring to when he said she would "Get used to it." Get used to what? But she didn't.

Surprisingly, her voice was still there. "I'm just tired," she said, trying to recover some version of the upper hand. "Out of it, is all."

He shook his head. "On the contrary, Agent Lisbon, I'd say you're entirely in it."

He started to walk away and then turned back, the same little smile on his face. "And your name is Teresa."

By the time she entirely worked out what he had said, he was walking away from her, not looking back, toward the coffee pot.

It was just as well. Her voice was gone again, anyway.

_**Next chapter: "Lisbon was angry."**_


	2. Angry

_**2**__**nd**__** Chapter, another Lisbon/Jane chapter. This is the first time he makes her angry. And I meant to say in the last A/N that if anyone had a suggestion for a scenario that would fit into this fic, I'm open to it. I'd kind of like that challenge. Thanks to those who reviewed the last chapter.**_

***

_Early September, 2007_

Lisbon was angry.

Jane didn't shrink from her anger, as he suspected most people did. He wasn't scared of it, or even made uncomfortable by it. He didn't crumble when she yelled at him, or make excuses when she questioned him. He was interested in it, fascinated by it, when he should have been submissive and contrite.

To be fair, he'd made it eight entire days without causing trouble. For eight days, he managed to keep himself in check—to do everything Lisbon asked, to play by the book, yada yada—and he was sure that once she got to know him, she would come to understand that eight days was some kind of personal best.

On the eighth day, he hypnotized someone. It was a suspect of no real importance, in the grand scheme of things: not the doer, not an accomplice. In that way, he almost agreed with her anger, in the risk he had taken for someone who turned out not to matter.

The presinct seemed to live and die on Lisbon's anger. Cho, for one, whom he'd met just over a week before, buzzed around in an almost nervous way, edgy, a departure from his typical calm, bored demeanor. He advised Jane to keep his head down for a while, it would blow over, but do not, he said, _absolutely do not_, he emphasized, under any circumstances do anything to make it worse. As long as you don't poke at her, don't bother her, she'll get over it.

Unfortunately, poking at people was one of Jane's favorite things. It was ingrained in him, he couldn't remember a time when it wasn't—to prod at people to get a rise out of them. It was an old habit, and a bad one, but one he had come to embrace.

Lisbon's office was in the far corner of the squad room, just in front of the run-down brown couch that Jane was quickly beginning to claim as his own. She was inside, sitting on the rotating chair behind her desk, facing the window, away from him. It was the middle of the afternoon, and Cho had gone out for lunch. Lisbon hadn't: watching her over the previous eight days, he had come to realize that she very rarely took breaks, and certainly not for things so trivial and unessential as food. She packed her own lunch, and Jane had more than once seen her nibbling at a sandwich in one hand and typing with the other; drinking her coffee while on the phone; eating dinner while reading case reports. She was dedicated, but it wasn't just to the job: she was the kind of person who wanted to be great at everything she did. She wanted to lose herself in it, he thought, because then she wouldn't have to think about anything else. Whatever her anything else was.

He let himself in, turning the knob gently, and stepped with soft feet into the room. She didn't notice him at first, still facing the window. He saw that she was reading a file, and tugging at her lower lip. He hadn't taken her for a fidgeter, and stored that bit of information in his head for later.

"Lisbon."

She turned with a sudden frightened start, as if he had intruded on something intensely private. He assumed that meant she hadn't really been reading the file at all, but thinking some thought or another that she would have found embarrassing. He had noticed her wringing her hands at different points throughout the day, looking nervous, and somehow these two things connected for him. Her cheeks grew faintly pink, and she steeled her jaw, trying to look forbidding.

"Jane," she said. "I'm going to assume you've never had a real job before."

That was unexpected, something rare. He felt his lips twisting into the honeyed smile that was a nervous twitch for him, as natural as some people bit their nails, or twiddled their thumbs. "Why would you say that?"

She raised her eyebrows, looking stern. "Because you obviously haven't learned that walking into your bosses' office without knocking is inappropriate."

For such a delicate-looking woman, Lisbon was surprisingly severe, a sharp contrast to the woman he'd met when he first started—wide-eyed, gaping at him, unable to form a coherent sentence. He hadn't seen that person again since they'd first met, and he was left trying to reconcile the two. She was a boss, completely and utterly, but still a woman, still attractive. She still bothered to put liner around her eyes, and spritz her sweet-smelling, flowery perfume on her neck and wrists. She was alluring, in some strange, unexpected way—more so than she would have been if she was all one thing, or all the other.

"Oh, no, I know that. I just didn't care." He spoke lightly, knowing that he was doing exactly what Cho had told him not to do—don't poke at Lisbon when she's angry, it's suicide, _you just don't do it._

If he truly believed Cho, at this point, he would have expected Lisbon to grow fangs, grow claws, and just go to town on him. But he somehow didn't expect that, didn't expect her to yell at him.

She didn't. She closed the file she was holding, without marking her place, and he noted that he was right about her not reading it. She set it on her keyboard and stood up, walked around her desk to lean against the front of it, to look him in the eye.

"Why are you here, Jane?"

The question caught him off guard. He somehow knew she didn't mean her office, and he didn't have an answer for her.

"You're not a cop," she continued. "You're good, but you're not a cop, and you don't want to be. So why are you here?"

"I don't know," he said. He did know, but didn't know how to explain it. Jane was a man who seldom had issues articulating his thoughts, but he had never considered his reasons for being here, not even by himself.

She crossed her arms and cocked her head to the side. She didn't believe him.

He continued. "I mean--" Then stopped. "I really don't know."

"I know it has to do with Red John. I do know about—you know." It was her turn to be uncomfortable. He could see her wishing she hadn't brought this up, but forcing herself to keep going. "And I understand it. But we don't always focus on that case. We usually don't." She stopped again, took a breath. "So why would you want to be involved in cases that don't involve that? Why are you here?"

He leaned back against her door. This was not how it was supposed to go. He was supposed to go into her office, get some amusement out of bothering her, and go back to his couch. It was strange to him that this plan had veered so far off course, and he didn't know how to get it back.

"I'm not going to let you out of here until you answer me, Jane." Her voice had somehow stopped sounding so severe in the middle of questioning him: it was steady and sweet, surprisingly maternal.

"I just need to feel like I'm doing something," he finally said. He couldn't explain any better than that.

She nodded, watched him to see if he was playing her. She looked like she decided he wasn't, and went back to sit behind her desk.

"Okay," she said. "Okay, Jane. But I swear to god, if you hypnotize anyone else, I'll be sawing off your arms and beating you to death with them. Got that?"

He laughed, feining a solemn, apologetic look.

"And knock," she said.

He laughed again, adopting a kindly tone. "I'm sorry I interrupted your, erm—musings about your date tonight. I know it's your first one in several months, and I'm sure it will be fine. You don't have to be so nervous about it. "

She looked at him with her eyes suddenly wide, and snatched the file off of her desk. She spun in her chair so that her back was to him, facing the window again; he left the room, chuckling, and against all odds, still alive.

***

Next Chapter: "Jane was distant."


	3. Distant

_**A/N: I didn't mention before that I wanted to finish this fic by the first of May, which is when I come home from school. So that's why the chapters are coming so fast, I tend to be very goal-oriented. So...sorry to just keep hitting you with them. lol**_

_**This is a Cho Chapter, because he doesn't get enough love. Mostly about Cho and Jane gaining an understanding that I do think we see from them on the show. There's a little nod to Lisbon/Jane's growing relationship in here, because I'm truly ridiculous. It's an issue. **_

***

_Late September, 2007_

Jane was distant.

He smiled a lot, that was true. He subtly flirted with pretty witnesses, figuratively tugged at Lisbon's pigtails, gave Cho tips for picking up women—but he was distant, not entirely there. It had taken Cho the better part of a month to realize it, and considering that Cho believed himself to be a reasonable judge of character, Jane's act was a damn good one.

It was based on the core human principle that people liked to talk about themselves. Jane was absolutely a "tell me more" kind of person, and the invitation to go on and on about yourself, without the burden of having to listen to someone else do the same, was unexpectedly seductive. And it was this quality, Cho realized, that had prevented him from noticing that he didn't know anything about Jane except that he was a funny, affable guy. He watched witnesses consistantly fall into Jane's trap, and he'd wondered how it was possible that they didn't realize it was an act he put on. Now, he entirely understood.

It wasn't like Cho really wanted Jane to open up, anyway. He knew the bare details about Jane's past—the murdered wife and daughter, the constant hunt for the elusive Red John. It wasn't exactly dinner conversation, and Cho would have been more scared than relieved if Jane brought it up. And it wasn't like Cho could even blame Jane for his distance—he wouldn't have judged him if he'd put a bullet in his own head after that. Something that terrible, you were entitled to deal with it almost any way you damn well pleased. And if Jane's way was pretending he was fine, all the time—adopting a slick smile and jaunty walk, prodding at people—well, it was a hell of a lot better than most ways.

And he got the distinct impression that the Jane he was meeting now was a shell, a preservation of what he used to be, at least outwardly. He was somehow sure that Jane's personality wasn't much different than it had always been, the outward disposition the same, but without the inside, just hollow. And it was easy to get distracted by the fancy crap on the outside of the shell before realizing that there was nothing in it.

In his first month, Jane had pissed off the boss no less than six times. Lisbon was already accustomed to it, though she had yet to be able to find humor in it. But Cho thought that she got less angry. At Jane. In general.

And for his part, Jane seemed to love her angry. It was an absurd sort of conquest he had of her, a twisted game the two of them played. They knew instinctively how to play it, both of them did. It was a part of his boss that Cho had never seen before the previous month. At first he didn't get what Jane was getting out of it, but now he thought that he did.

It was connecting, oddly thereputic. Lisbon was as distant as Jane was, but without the sparkling personality, the ease around people. She was much more up front about her distance, never showed anything unless she was angry. They tried to bring it out in each other, and most of the time, they both failed. It was an odd sort of power struggle, and neither were accustomed to having to struggle for power. It was usually just a given.

Cho looked over to the brown couch that Jane now practically lived on, and for the first time, noted the heavy bags under Jane's eyes. He looked tired, weary. It hadn't occured to him before now that Jane spent so much time there because he didn't sleep at home. He was twisting something around on his left hand, and on looking more closely, Cho realized it was a tiny gold ring on his fourth finger. His face was twisted up, lost in itself, and without the ever-present grin in his eyes, an entirely different face.

Cho surprised himself by laying a brief, sympathetic hand on Jane's shoulder as he walked past him, carrying a file into the bosses office, feeling something like understanding.

***

Next Chapter: "Cho wasn't haunted." Then it starts to pick up a bit.


	4. Haunted

_**A/N: This is another Cho chapter, though the next one will be getting back to Lisbon/Jane. I don't know why, but I pictured the CBI to be much more quiet and somber without Rigsby, so this reflects that. Thanks to the reviewers.**_

***

_Halloween, 2007_

Cho wasn't haunted.

It set him apart from the other two in his unit, made him distant from them. Cho hadn't had a significant trauma in his life, nor was he burdened by fears of his own inadequacy. He was, in nearly all ways, a normal, thirty-year old guy, except a little on the quiet side.

He wasn't raised by a single drunk parent, and he was never left in doubt of his parents' love. He didn't know the feeling of losing a spouse, or having to identify his own little girl in the morgue.

He wasn't like Lisbon or Jane.

In many ways, it felt as if his life hadn't started yet—he'd lived three decades, had a good job, but had never even come close to getting married or having children. He was a perpetual single-guy: it didn't escape him that he lived much the same way he had just out of college, except with a slightly higher salary. And really, only slightly.

In contrast, Jane and his boss had lived too much, too hard. Lisbon was five years his senior, and haunted. Jane was seven years his senior, and haunted. They weren't much older than he was, but they'd lived enough for three people each. They had that in common, and it counted for more than either of them realized, because they were always ready to quibble about their differences.

Cho felt like an outsider in this sense, a foreigner on the island, even though he was glad not to be an insider. The two of them were weighted down and heavy, and even despite Jane's simple attempts to lighten the mood, a somber quality sometimes hung over them. It wasn't like they never laughed. Even the boss occasionally ventured out of her office to make fun of Cho's fondness for short-sleeved button-downs, which she considered "tacky" and Jane's way of grabbing a suspects hand to see if they were lying. But there were frequent moments of gloom between the two of them, and considering it was two on one, Cho felt almost alien for his normal, mundane life.

Take today. It was Halloween in California, and the air was cooler than it had been in months. Cho was sitting at his desk, and turned toward the door to see a pretty blonde woman coming inside, tugging at a little girls' hand. The little girl was wearing a puffy violet dress and fairy wings, and the two made a bee-line for Andrew's desk, another detective who worked in the building. Andrews, a six-foot-four, very regal black guy, stood up when he saw them, and bent down laughing to pick up his little girl, to kiss his wife on the cheek.

The thing was, scenes like that made Cho smile. They made him happy. They reminded him of being a little boy, when he dressed up like the Lone Ranger or Big Bird (both of which, sadly, he had, and there were pictures to document it) and went trick-or-treating with his older sisters, who would bully him into climbing the stairs of the houses that were particularly high off the ground, making him bring down enough candy for all three of them. Or when one of his sisters brought their children to his apartment, because he doted on his nieces and nephews, and gave out the best candy. It was all good memories for him.

Not so for Jane and Lisbon. Lisbon peeked over from her office and turned around, turned away, to face her window. He couldn't blame her, what with the image of a mother and daughter, a functional dad who took care of them. It made her sad.

Jane, for his part, walked over to greet them: he clasped Andrews on the shoulder, and flashed his wife his trademark wide smile. He asked the little girl, with her honey-colored skin and curly hair, what her name was, what she was dressed as. She answered with a shy smile, chewing her little fingers, looking up at him.

It was only later that Cho realized that Jane was uncharacteristically quiet, that he wasn't smiling. The three of them were on a rough case and they ate dinner together in the presinct, some Chinese food that Lisbon had ordered out for, and chewed in silence. It felt heavy again, and Cho waited for it to pass, like it usually did.

It was after ten, and Cho watched the clock and prayed for time to go by a little bit faster: for Halloween to just be over already.

***

Next Chapter: "Lisbon was a bad liar." It should be up later today.


	5. Liar

_**A/N: We're getting back to the Lisbon/Jane. Yay. There's this one episode where Jane tells Lisbon that she's transparant, that she's a really bad liar. She asks for an example, and he tells her that she was lying the previous Thanksgiving when she said she was going back east to visit her brother. So I just took that, and wrote about it.**_

***

_Late November, 2007_

Lisbon was a bad liar.

She had probably spent her thirty-plus years thinking she was a good one; thinking the was stoic and opaque. She had probably gone so long with this mistaken belief because no one had the nerve or the desire to call her on it, to push past the defenses to what lay underneath.

And Jane thought he knew this, because, at the present moment, he was one of those people.

He had gone into Lisbon's office without knocking that day, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, sat in one of the chairs facing her desk. Lisbon was facing the window (a habit he noticed she had) and refusing to turn around, in a silent battle of the wills that the two always waged.

Jane usually won, because he would proceed to go through her things; he would pick up her picture frames and look at the photos; he would pick up her i-pod and scroll through her playlists. Eventually, being the control freak that she was, she would get scared that he might come upon something too personal; draw some conclusion she was scared of him making. She would turn around and fix him with a hard glare, jaw set, and ask him what the hell he wanted.

"What the hell do you want, Jane?"

He grinned at her, and set down the picture he was holding. She rolled her eyes at his smudgy fingerprints on the glass, and grabbed a tissue to wipe them off.

"I want to know how you're spending Thanksgiving."

A brief shadow crossed her face and quickly left it, so quickly that he might have imagined it. She spoke lightly. "I'm going back east to visit my brother."

He frowned. It occured to him to call her on the lie, but he decided not to. Not yet, anyway: he'd save that particular joy for later, for the scoreboard he kept in the back of his mind.

"Where does he live?"

He expected Lisbon to look annoyed at the question, but she didn't. Lisbon was definitely not predictable. She was very readable, sure, but somehow still an enigma. It was a mix that fascinated him.

"New York," she said. "He lives in this ridiculously expensive condo in Manhattan with his new wife." There was a tone of pride in her voice that interested him. He didn't know anything specific about Lisbon's family, but the pride sounded like she had played a significant role in raising him. And most likely after a trauma, he thought; she was probably forced to grow up too fast.

"Younger?" He guessed.

She looked surprised. "How do you know that?" It had been almost three months, but she still hadn't gotten used to the idea of him reading her.

"It's in your voice. And significantly younger, too. I'd say at least five years."

She laughed, looked wistfully past him. The hard lines that lay perpetually around her eyes relaxed, and without them, he was startled at how green her eyes were. "Seven years, yeah."

"Are you two close?" He was trying to get the truth of why she was lying out of her, without having to ask directly.

"Why are you suddenly so interested in my family, Jane?"

Well, it had to happen sooner or later. He was surprised she had already given up so much without protest.

"Idle curiosity," he lied.

She bit her lip, he could see her considering. She wanted to talk—a rare occasion and rare mood for her, but he could tell that she wasn't sure she wanted to talk to him. It would be too much like conceeding, and Lisbon hated making concessions. Jane did, too, come to that—it was the very thing they were perpetually fighting over.

"Don't worry, Lisbon," he said. "You can talk. I doubt you'll give me everything, anyway. It's not in you."

"No," she said, suddenly. "No, we're not. Not anymore." She suddenly sounded almost broken, and Jane thought that it might be the closest thing he would ever get to her letting him see her. Then she said, voice soft, "He doesn't have time. I don't have time."

He nodded, looked her in the eye. "I'm sorry," he said simply.

She couldn't seem to take his sympathy, and stood. She didn't kick him out of her office, though he thought he saw her consider it. When she turned back around she was smiling, but it was a surface smile, floating there on her lips, that didn't make it into her eyes.

"And what about you, Jane? How are you spending Thanksgiving?"

He laughed mischevously. "I'm going to stay at home. Eat ice cream. Watch TV."

He actually had no intention on doing anything of the sort; his home was hardly a place he relaxed in, for obvious reasons. He thought he might go out to a bar, pester some unfortunate lady bartender, and sleep in his car. But she lit up when he told her his plans, most likely because hers were similar.

"Oh," she said. Then, very tentatively: "You aren't, you know, sad to be alone on Thanksgiving?"

The question was clearly geared more towards herself than him, and he sought to reassure her. "A little bit, sure. But it'll be nice. I'll get some rest. Read a little. Enjoy the quiet, for once. It's nothing to be ashamed of."

Her eyes were wide, she seemed to be taking him in. "You don't think so?"

"Not at all."

She stood again, and took a file from the top of her computer. She put it in his hands, careful not to touch his. "This is for Cho. For his interrogation. They should be bringing him in soon."

He stood, too, recognized her want to be alone, and for once, decided to respect it. "When does your flight leave?" He was still playing along now, unable to do anything else, unable to abide the sadness in her face. She wasn't the kind of person to be sad, but there it was.

"Tomorrow night."

"You have a good Thanksgiving, Lisbon." His voice was soft, laced with a tenderness he hadn't expected to feel. She noticed it, too, from the way she looked at him; it was more gentle, for once not keeping score. If just for a moment.

"I will," she said. "I'll try."

When he was half out of her office, she called him back. She was wringing her hands, as if trying to decide if she should stick to her lie. He waited, understood.

"It's okay," he said, in that unusal tender voice again, that voice that didn't sound like it belonged to him. "I'm going to find Cho, alright?"

She released a breath, and nodded. She let him leave.

He walked out of her office, and considered. He'd meant to call her on the lie, but didn't do it, couldn't do it. There was some vulnerability in her face; some silent pleading just to let it be. That was how she'd made it three decades with the mistaken impression that she was a good liar. No one could not have a soft spot for the delicately rounded face, the big green eyes. Given that, it seemed a small thing to give her what she wanted.

***

Next Chapter: "Jane hated Christmas."


	6. Christmas

_**Okay, this was going to be much more angsty than it actually is. It's written a little differently than the other stories, divided into sections, but I think it's easy enough to follow. Also, there's a little nod to something VinnieK mentioned in her last review that I should do, the whole mistletoe scene. Sadly, it's not as in-your-face as you might like, but I thought I'd throw that in. : )**_

_***_

_December, 2007_

Jane hated Christmas.

He wasn't Scrooge or anything, but the holiday had changed for him. When he was a little boy, he would wake up his entire house at six-thirty on Christmas morning, still wearing his footie pajamas, and make them go downstairs to open their presents. When he was an adult, his little girl would wake up him and his wife at six-thirty, to go downstairs and open their presents. His wife had been big on Christmas—she would make pancakes from scratch on Christmas morning, and insisted on buying their daughter an inordinate amount of gifts, and the two of them would watch in satisfaction as she opened up each present with glowing eyes.

But that part of his life was gone now. He listened appreciatively as others talked about their Christmases; he smiled at little kids he saw waiting in line to see Santa. But it wasn't for him, the whole Christmas season, not anymore.

_December 18__th__, 2007_

They were between cases, it was a week before Christmas, and the Serious Crimes Unit was slowing down. Jane was sitting on Cho's desk in the middle of the afternoon, pestering him as he scribbled out the paperwork that he hated.

"Hey, Cho, did you know that by the time they die, the average person will have spent a full two weeks waiting for traffic lights to change?"

Cho didn't look up. "Not now, Jane."

Jane's eyes lit up, he stayed where he was. "I'm serious. And by the time you die, you'll probably have spent a good six years checking boxes on that paperwork."

Cho leveled him with a stare, stony-faced, giving away nothing. "So, what, is Lisbon getting boring?"

Jane laughed. "Why would you ask that?"

"Why aren't you sitting on her desk?" Cho raised his eyebrows ironically. "I hate to break it to you, but I'm not your type. I somehow suspect that I lack that whole wavy-haired, green-eyed, fiery tempered thing that you seem to like so much."

It took him a second to realize Cho was teasing him, and he grinned. "Touche." Then leaned back further on Cho's desk. "What are you doing for Christmas?"

Cho frowned, set down his pen. "Nothing exciting."

"Ah. Family dinner."

"How do you do that?" Cho was different from the boss. Whenever Jane read him, which was considerably more often these days, he wasn't annoyed by it. He found it amusing. Cho didn't have big things that he didn't want Jane to uncover; in that way, he was utterly unlike Lisbon.

"It's all over your face, man."

Cho laughed. "I'm going to go there, right? And they're all going to ask me why I'm not married yet. Every year I get closer to thirty, they go on about how I need to find a nice girl and bring her home."

A voice from behind surprised the two of them. "So why don't you? You're a good guy. You should see people, Cho." It was Lisbon, with a rare smile on her face, an unusual extra cheer in her voice. Jane noted it for later.

"I see people."

Lisbon tilted her head to the side, not believing him. Jane came to his aid.

"No, Cho sees people. Not seriously, he's terrified of commitment. But sometimes when he gets lonely, he goes out to bars and connects with other lonely women. Drinks with them, and wakes up at their apartment the next morning. Occasionally. Every few months or so, I'd say."

"Seriously. How the hell do you do that?" Cho gave an embarrassed laugh, looked guiltily at Lisbon. "And in front of the boss? Not cool."

Lisbon sat on Cho's desk too, next to Jane. "Well then, tell them you see people."

Jane shook his head. "Cho can hardly tell his parents that the only people he sees are random bar women that he doesn't take on actual dates."

"Exactly. That's why--" Cho stopped. Jane caught it, pointed at him.

"Come on, there's no self censorship between friends. Give it up."

Cho laughed. "I was just thinking of last year. My Grandmother asked me if I was gay."

Lisbon's eyes got wide, she jumped off the desk, suddenly laughing. Jane thought that he had never seen her look like that, and by the way Cho stared at her, he most likely hadn't either. "And what did you say?"

"What was there to say? I said I wasn't. I don't think I was very convincing." At the two judging looks he was getting from the other two, he pouted, leaned back. "Listen. Why don't you have a seventy-five year old woman ask you about _your_ sex life, see how _you_ answer?"

They all laughed.

_December 20__th__, 2007_

He snatched up Lisbon's hand suddenly, laid a quick kiss on her knuckles. He didn't release the hand as fast as she would have liked, but held it in his. She had to snatched hers away, eventually, looking around the squad room to see if anyone saw.

"What the hell, Jane?"

"Bored," he said, in that flippant tone he knew she hated.

"What the hell, Jane?" she repeated.

"I was just curious." he said.

"Jane..." she said warningly. Her face was faintly pink, her eyes were flashing. She was unexpectedly flustered, and he ate it up.

"Mistletoe," he said, gesturing with his head upward. "Feel lucky it was just your hand. I could do it over, if you like."

"Counting my blessings," she said, and was gone.

When he looked after her, she was grinning a little, thinking she was alone, thinking she was unreadable. But there was that little amused smile on her face that made him smile, too—that she more likely than not didn't realize was there. It was soft, it was sweet, gone in the next second.

He thought back on it later, as the day went on.

_December 25__th__, 2007_

It wasn't the Christmases he used to have with his family, but it also wasn't like the previous three he'd had. He wasn't eating wholesome family dinner with his wife and daughter, but he wasn't crying into a bottle of Jack Daniels, either.

It was something like improvement.

He'd treated himself to a nice, expensive dinner, by himself, eaten Calimari, sampled good wine. He'd gone to a movie earlier in the day, relaxed in the front row with his feet up, popped M&M's into his mouth. He went to the office to find it surprisingly open, laid down on his couch, closed his eyes. His bosses office was dark. He'd found out she had gone to Portland to visit an aunt. Cho's desk was empty.

His cell phone beeped, and he opened it to find a message from Cho.

_She just asked me what my lover's name was. My LOVER. Please kill me._

He laughed. In Cho's way, it was thoughtful. It was saying, I know you're by yourself right now, but you have company. It was nice. Jane typed back.

_So play along. Say his name is Eduardo. I think that has a nice ring to it._

He closed his phone, and lay back.

It beeped again.

This time, it was a message from Lisbon. It was a picture of a stubby Christmas tree with white lights on it. The message below it read simply, _Merry Christmas, Jane._

He thought about it. It had been a normal day, not much special about it. No real ceremony, no tree, no family gathering. It was a typical weekend day, but not a bad one, not a horrible day.

He thought it was the best he could hope for.

***

Next Chapter: "Jane was a father."


	7. Father

_**A/N: This is my least favorite chapter so far, but I got tired of messing with it. I don't think they gave Jane's daughter a name in the show, so I named her. Thanks to all the reviewers.**_

_**A/N 2: I have forgotten to do this up to now, but I obviously don't own them. Wish I did. But don't.**_

***

_January, 2008_

Jane was a father.

His daughter had been dead for over four years, but that part of his nature, his sense of identity, was still there.

Lisbon came across this unexpected piece of Jane a few months after they had been working together, when they were out on a case, questioning a witness. Jane wandered off like he tended to do, she hardly thought anything of it anymore, and she went to find him. She came across him on the stairs playing toy soldiers with the witnesses' five-year-old son. The little boy, small and brown-haired, was most likely not accustomed to having a playmate with his soldiers, and thus delighted in Jane's overall attentiveness, in the fake voices he put on, and the two laughed raucously, two little boys together.

After she'd collected Jane, they walked down the street to the van together in silence; Jane still with a far away, nostalgic smile on his lips.

"You know, that was kind of...cute," Lisbon said, not looking at him.

Jane slid a sideways glance at her. "So you think I'm cute now, huh?" he teased her.

"You see? This is why I don't give you compliments."

"Why is that?"

"Because you're an ass," she responded, still not looking at him. "I said _that_ was cute. Playing with the little action figures."

He nodded. "My daughter likes Barbies, so I have practice, I guess."

She tried to keep her face neutral at his usage of the present tense, but felt her eyebrows almost instantly scrunch together, as if they weren't connected to her. She had never been aware of how many tells she had before she met him; no one else would have looked at her closely enough to see them before then.

"Liked," he corrected himself. "Liked. Sorry."

She shook her head, trying not to look as tragic and sad for him as she knew she did. She really needed to get more control over her facial expressions. It was becoming an issue. "Don't apologize to me."

"I made you uncomfortable." It wasn't a question. Jane never questioned his observations. He stated them as fact, and most of the time they were.

She thought about saying no, she wasn't uncomfortable, but she'd already learned that lying to Jane tended to be pointless. All you did was give him more ammo, reveal more about yourself by being dishonest. It was a thing about him that she hated.

"A little. Don't worry about it." Jane looked rapidly over to her, face surprised. He appreciated honesty, and that made sense, considering he spent his life looking for it in people.

They didn't speak anymore while walking to the car. They were both silent as they climbed in.

Lisbon tried to get her mind off of the shell-shocked sensation she had felt at Jane referring to his little girl as if she were still alive, as if he would go home to her after his shift was over. It made her real—a flesh and blood seven-year-old who had might have shared Jane's smile, his curly blonde hair, who wasn't alive anymore. He was someone's father, like her father was—or at least the way he had been, before her mother died. There had once been a little girl who looked up to him, who depended on him. She could hardly even imagine it.

He was someone's father: he had once picked up a little girl from the second grade, took her to see animated movies, and pushed her on the swings. He might have gone to a parent-teacher conference or two, might have taught her how to swim, how to ride a bike.

He might have thought about the day she would graduate from high school, might have imagined lugging boxes and boxes of her belongings to her college dorm room. He might have imagined giving her away when she got married, a beautiful young woman in a long white dress, might have imagined kissing her cheek before handing her to her husband. He might have imagined going to the hospital to meet his first grandchild—imagined his wife pointing the baby out to him in the hospital nursery. He might have imagined watching that child graduate from high school too, might have imagined watching that child get married, and wondered if he would live long enough to hold his great-granddaughter. He might have thought about the day he would eventually die, when he was an old man, and the words he would use to give her comfort in mourning him. He might have imagined all of those things, she thought, and he might still.

Jane had been a relative enigma to her during those last months, though she hadn't tried particularly hard to figure him out. She spent much of her time with him trying to deflect his personal questions, deflect his prodding, that she'd never even thought about doing some of her own. She had never thought to ask him about his wife, about his daughter. It had been months, she realized, and it had never even occured to her.

That part of his life seemed so distant from the Jane she knew now: she had never known him to grieve, or to look haunted, he was always too self contained. And she never asked.

"What was her name?" She heard herself ask him. Her voice was gentle, it was reverent. She didn't know what she was doing.

"Isabella," he said, not taking his eyes off the road.

They drove on, they were silent.

She had never thought about what it meant to lose an entire family: she had lost her own mother at thirteen years old, and even that had sufficiently fractured her, had almost torn her apart. She couldn't imagine the adrift feeling that Jane had to have, the reminding himself that he didn't have a family, not anymore.

But he was still a father. He still had a little girl. Her name was Isabella.

It was one thing Red John hadn't taken.

***

Next Chapter: "Rigsby was new."


	8. New

_**A/N: You'll get what this means after you're done reading this chapter , but I'll tell you what it is about Rigsby's signature that Jane profiles in another chapter. I kind of pictured Rigsby being shy at first, especially around Lisbon, who is both pretty and terrifying, so that's in here. I've actually never written Rigsby before, and most of Rigsby stories are about Rigsby/Van Pelt, so it was kind of hard for me to write this chapter. Anyway, the bulk of Rigsby's character development will show up later. Thanks to the reviewers.**_

***

_Early February, 2008_

Rigsby was new.

He had been a cop for going on five years now, had developed a routine in his job. He arrested people who committed crimes, he put them in jail. That was his job, in it's simplest essence, and it was still his job now, but it was changing rapidly before his eyes.

Rigsby was much more ambitious than people normally thought. He had been raised to be steadfast, to be hardworking, to rise—and it was this tendency in him that had landed him this job, working in the CBI; that had him walking into a new presinct on a sunny, Monday afternoon with no idea what to expect.

He was met first by a petite woman with very dark hair and very green eyes. She was wearing jeans and a forrest green sweater, her gun clipped to her belt.

"I'm looking—" he stopped, tried again. "I mean, I'm supposed to find—" _Crap. Rigsby. Focus_. "I'm supposed to find an Agent Lisbon." _Oh, thank you god._

The woman raised her eyebrows, and he shifted his feet, looked down. "That's me," she said, surprising him. He looked up at her again. Objectively, she was quite pretty. She was definitely not much older than her early thirties. She couldn't have been more than five-foot-two, five-foot-three at the absolute most. She smelled of fruity shampoo and a tiny hint of flowery perfume. But on the second look, he noticed the way she held herself, shoulders squared and jaunty, steel in her eyes. She held herself like a formidable woman, a woman to be reckoned with, definitely not the sort of pretty woman he might have shyly come onto in a bar. She could definitely be someone's boss.

He was supposed to talk, not gape at her. Right. "I, um, I'm sorry. Rigsby—it's my first day," he said, by way of introduction.

"Of course, yeah." At least he was in the right place. It was a step in the right direction. "I'll come and talk to you in a few minutes. Pick a desk," she said, gesturing to the empty desks in front of them. She spoke briskly, she was already walking away from him.

He frowned, not wanting the choice, nervous that even a decision so trivial as where to sit might be the wrong one. Rigsby wandered a bit, scraping his fingertips on each of the desks, as if waiting for one to suddenly jump out and announce itself as the right one. He needed to sit somewhere—he was concious of his gawky movements, awkward hunched-over stance, and needed to find a place. Somewhere.

Lisbon turned around, she looked at him. A ghost of a smile crossed her face. "Don't look so scared," she said. "The scary things haven't happened yet." He released a breath, picked a desk, put down his briefcase, sat.

"Good start," she said. He nodded. He didn't know Agent Lisbon, but even her comfort was intimidating.

***

He was sitting.

Counting the tiles in the ceiling, waiting for Lisbon to come back. He tried not to make contact with the people walking by, and this worked until a man came over to sit on his desk.

He nodded, he had to. The man on his desk—a blonde guy in a gray three-piece suit, laughed at him.

"You must be Rigsby," he said. His voice was pleasant enough. He was more friendly than Lisbon, at least.

"I am."

The man nodded. He kicked his feet a little, didn't move from the desk. "I'm Jane," he said.

Rigsby noted the name, a girl's name, but didn't ask. It probably wasn't a good first impression to tell a co-worker that his name was usually reserved for middle-aged housewives.

The man talked again. "It's not my first name. My first name is Patrick. You didn't have to be scared to ask, I don't get insulted easily."

"No, I wasn't—"

"Don't lie, now. It doesn't make a good first impression, does it?" His voice was still pleasant, but Rigsby thought he had misplaced Jane's friendliness. He certainly wasn't rude, but there was more to him than simple geniality, something else entirely that he couldn't place.

"Can I ask you a personal question, Rigsby?" Jane asked, out of nowhere.

"I guess so," he said, not knowing what to expect, not having the measure of this Jane, not yet.

"How old are you?"

It wasn't a terribly personal question. It wasn't too bad. "Twenty-seven," he said.

"And can you stand up for me?"

Rigsby frowned, not knowing where this was going, but stood. He was about a head taller than Jane.

Jane nodded for Rigsby to sit. "And you're german?"

That was slightly more personal, and a lot more weird. "On my dad's side, yeah."

"And your dad—he's a working-class guy, right? Is big on you moving up in the world, starting a family. The masculine ideal. Bet he's crazy about you getting this gig, huh?"

That was much more personal, and now teetering on creepy. "How do you know that?"

Jane laughed. "It's what they pay me for." He hopped off the desk. "Cho!" he called, "Cho!"

Another man appeared, a young asian guy, his age, maybe a few years older. "Jesus Christ, Jane. No yelling in the presinct, Lisbon's already kicked your ass on that one. What?"

"You owe me twenty bucks," Jane informed him gleefully. "This is Rigsby."

Cho frowned. "Shit." He turned to Rigsby. "Are you younger that twenty-eight?"

Rigsby frowned. "Yes."

"Taller than six-three?"

He frowned harder. "Yes."

"German?"

He laughed now, couldn't help himself. "Yes."

"And your dad is big on you being masculine?"

Rigsby laughed again. He'd stepped into the fucking twilight zone. "Yes."

Cho reached into his pocket, and pulled out a twenty dollar bill. "Christ," he grumbled. "You haven't even been here thirty minutes, and you're already costing me money." He handed the bill to Jane, who pocketed it.

"Thank you," he said. "I forgot to pack my lunch today, and I forgot my wallet. I was scared for a minute I'd have to raid the mini-fridge in Lisbon's office again. She only has salads, you know, never any good stuff."

Rigsby was momentarily diverted. From what he knew of Lisbon, which was very little, he wouldn't touch any of her belongings with a ten-foot pole. She seemed like she'd cut your hands off. "You do that?" he asked Jane. "Raid her refrigerator, I mean?"

Jane shrugged, and Cho laughed. "Only Jane. The rest of us are fond of being alive."

Rigsby leaned back, felt the tension in his shoulders give way a little. Cho was something like normal. It was a relief.

"Are you going to tell me how you knew all that stuff about me?" Rigsby asked.

Jane chuckled. "I haven't been following you, or anything. I just saw a form with your signature on it yesterday. My friend Cho here thought that I couldn't profile you from your signature."

"And?" he asked.

"Consider yourself profiled."

Rigsby was finally getting it. _That's what they pay me for_, Jane had said. "So you profile? That's what you're doing here? You're obviously not a cop."

Jane nodded. "I observe," he said. "I see things." Then paused. "How did you figure I wasn't a cop?"

Rigsby laughed, his first real laugh. "You're wearing a three-piece suit," he said.

Jane laughed, too, and Cho joined in.

"Point taken."

***

Next Chapter: "Lisbon never went out."


	9. Out

_**A/N: I'm not sure if this chapter is in character, but in my defense I've had a crappy day and that zapped a lot of my inspiration. There are some definite moments of Jane flirting with Lisbon in here, which I wasn't sure I wanted to put in, but I figured he had to start flirting with her sometime, because he was definitely already doing it by the pilot. R&R. **_

***

_Late February, 2008_

Lisbon never went out.

She wasn't a partier, never had been. Not even when she was supposed to be—he college days were spent jetting home on weekends to make sure her father was okay—to provide guidance to her teenage brothers. She was an adult already by the time she actually became one, and she had never had time for it.

It was the same now, even though her brothers were all adults living out of state, and she rarely saw her father. She worked fourteen hour days with the CBI, and had neither the time or the inclination to go out after those hours were over.

It was surprising, then, that she was sitting in a bar on a Friday night, nursing a Margherita, with the rest of her unit. It was more than surprising—it was downright bizarre. The boys were playing pool together—that was what she called them now, the boys. The addition of Rigsby had, in some imperceptible way, turned the three of them into a unit.

Lisbon was perched on a bar stool, pondering her new position. She was still the boss, sure: Cho was still terrified to make her angry, Rigsby was new, and in shy awe of her, and Jane was still Jane. But somehow, she had turned into "the girl"—the only woman, outnumbered three to one. It meant different things. For one, she had yet to buy a single margherita so far—Rigsby had discretely covered all of them. Jane pulled out her chair whenever they went to lunch, held the door open for her when they were out on cases. Cho brought her a cranberry muffin every morning from the coffee shop up the street where he bought his breakfast. They all tried, in small ways, to take care of her. She, in turn, pretended she didn't notice, because she hated the thought of being taken care of almost as much as she liked Margheritas ,having her chair pulled out for her, and cranberry muffins.

There was a young female bartender waiting on them—she was probably no older than twenty-five, she wore a short black skirt, and as far as Lisbon could tell, she was all business. Rigby eyed her appreciatively. She brought over three drinks—Cho's beer wasn't the Miller Lite he had asked for, and Jane's rum and coke was weaker than he had told her he wanted. Rigsby's extra dirty martini, a drink that they had all teased him for getting, was made perfectly.

"We need bait," she heard Rigsby say, after the woman left. "If other women look interested, she'll follow."

Jane laughed. "An interesting idea. It suggests that women fundamentally aren't interested in men for being men, but instead, to triumph over other women."

Rigsby rolled his eyes, Lisbon thought he had taken a remarkably short time to tune out Jane's long speeches. "Spare me the psycho-babble. You got a better idea?"

Jane put up his hands in mock surrender. Lisbon doubted he didn't have a better plan, but was silent. "What's your bait?" he asked.

Three pairs of eyes met Lisbon on the stool.

"Absolutely not," she said. "That is quite possibly the dumbest thing I've ever heard you say, and Rigsby, that's saying something."

Rigsby looked injured, and Jane clasped him on the shoulder. Cho stood, sipped his beer. "Are you going to play the next round with us, boss?"

Lisbon shook her head. "I told you, Cho, I'm horrible at pool."

The three were standing in a semi-circle in front of her now. Jane was tapping his pool cue against her knee, making a puppy face. Rigsby and Cho were slightly more distant, having already adopted similar attitudes toward her.

"So we'll teach you."

"Rigsby will," Jane said, suddenly mischevious.

"Why me?"

Lisbon raised her eyebrows. "Why is that such a punishment?"

"It's not, boss."

Lisbon drained the last of her Margherita, was quiet. She was never one to over play her hand, never one to give up what she was thinking too quickly. She had cultivated that habit even more since she met Jane, the constant game of not giving away too much. Jane signaled the bartender to bring her another drink, pointing to himself, indicating he was paying.

"Okay," she said.

She stood, took a pool cue from the wall. It was a short one, suited for her small height, she thought. "I don't know how to hold this thing," she said, drawing laughter from the others.

"Like this," Rigsby said, indicating with his own hands. His fingers were curled around the front of it, the tip of the stick between his fingers. She did it herself, leaned over the table.

"You're not leaning right," Rigsby said. He moved next to her. "Hips up a little." He did it himself rather than touch her. She moved her hips. "Back more... stretched." She stretched. "Not like that. Try to put a curve in it." She tried.

Rigsby chuckled. "Okay. No." Then uncertainly, "I'm going to put my hand on your back now. Just my hand, to get you in the right position. Okay?"

She heard gales of laughter from behind her, and saw Rigsby turn to give Cho a dirty look. She could almost hear Jane's smile, that cat that got the canary grin. He would have known the discomfort Rigsby would have with her, and that's why he would have set it up this way. Why? Because he was a bastard.

He pushed on her spine with the very tips of his fingers. "Rigsby, if you jab me like that again, so help me god, it'll be the last thing you ever do."

He snickered uncomfortably. "Shoulders down some," he mumbled. She obviously didn't do it right, because she felt the tips of his fingers on her shoulders next. "Good," he said. She was sure his face was red. It was funny and infuriating all at the same time. "I think you're good."

She shot. She actually hit the little white ball. Even more shockingly, a little red ball went into a hole.

"Look at that!" Rigsby yelled. "Guess I'm a good teacher," he said.

"A teacher who is mortally terrified of his student," Cho laughed.

"Like you'd be much better," Rigsby shot back, and it was true. She had been in the same unit with Cho for over a year and a half now, and hell if he still didn't stutter in terror around her.

Jane sidled up next to Rigsby. "And look who's watching you," Jane said, nodding to the right. The pretty bartender was eyeing Rigsby, eyeing Lisbon. Lisbon rolled her eyes at the woman, a reflex she couldn't help.

"So I guess I was right, huh?" Rigsby said, in triumph.

"Yes and no," Jane responded. "She liked you the whole time."

"How'd you see that?"

"You're the only one whose drink she remembered."

"So?"

"So she remembered the drink, she remembered you. Just a guess."

Rigsby signaled for the bartender to come over, wearing a plodding, insecure smile.

***

An hour later, they were playing Dean Martin.

Cho and Rigsby were significantly drunk by then, she and Jane were not.

Lisbon had always been more partial to Martin over Sinatra, though she kept this fact to herself. People tended to view it as a mortal song was Sway, and a few couples had made their way onto the very small hardwood bar dance floor. She took in the subtle guitar, the airy beat, rolling her head around, in a reverie. Jane looked over to her, smiled.

"Are you going to ask me to dance, Lisbon?" He was a little tipsy, his speech was slurred somewhat. His voice was more husky than usual, a little lower in his throat.

"Why would I do that?" She laughed at him.

"Fair point. Can I ask you?"

She considered for a moment. "Sure you can. Ask."

"Lisbon, do you want to dance with me?"

"Of course not," she deadpanned. At his injured look she replied, "I never said I'd say yes."

He reached over, put an arm around her shoulders. He had taken to touching bits of her lately, nothing major, a graze on the elbow here, a tapping at her forearm there. He leaned into her little. "Why not?" he asked, in that same voice. She braved a look into his mischevious blue eyes, and moved his arm. The idea of dancing with Jane was too intimate, too—indescribably impossible. She couldn't even imagine it. It was a mental block she could never get past, even when she was out on a Friday night, even with a few drinks in her.

"I don't dance."

"Not true. If I weren't me, if you didn't know me, you could." He looked part cheeky, part naughty little boy. She didn't lie.

"But you are you, I do know you, and I can't."

He nodded. The song played on. Cho and Rigsby stood on the other side of the bar, wandering, laughing about something she didn't know. "How long has it been since you've gone out, Lisbon?"Jane suddenly asked, surprising her. Even halfway drunk he could pry, could observe, could reach into her life.

"I go out."

He looked at her.

"Sometimes," she said.

He looked at her again.

"Rarely," she conceeded.

He waited.

"It's just not me," she said.

"You're having fun now." It wasn't a question. "You played a perfectly respectable game of pool, you watched Rigsby strike out with the bartender, and now they're playing your favorite song. And you're thinking, 'I should do this more often.' But knowing you won't. Why is that?"

She turned to face him full on. "Do you ever turn that off?" she asked. "Do you ever not do that?"

"Does it bother you?"

She turned back. "You know it does."

"Not as much as it used to. Like it or not, Lisbon, you're getting used to me. I'm even growing on you."

She crossed her legs, the song was ending now.

_When you dance you have a way with me, stay with me, sway with me._

He leaned in close, not touching her, breath warm. "And that's the real reason you won't dance with me."

She had learned that in these situations it was best not to say anything. Jane could get something out of anything, and she had learned that the best course of action in diffusing the Jane observation machine was not to engage.

"I think I'll go home now," she said. "It's late."

It was. It was after two in the morning, and instead of being curled up in her own bed watching law shows, making fun of how unrealistic they were, she was here. It was weird.

"You have a cab outside," he said nonchalantly.

She looked puzzled. "I didn't call a cab yet."

He nodded. "I know. I called it about twenty minutes ago. Figured you'd be leaving soon."

He got up to walk her to the door. It was a chilly night, and he guided her, briefly with one hand on the small of her back. It was warm, it was secure. It was a sharp contrast to Rigsby's icy, terrified fingers on her spine. It was another touch, and she moved away from it, but much more slowly, much more reluctant to leave the warmth behind, to go into the brisk night air.

***

Next Chapter: "Jane still wore his wedding ring."


	10. Ring

_**A/N: Before this fic starts, I should say that I've never bought the idea of Jane being entirely celibate in the five years after his wife died. I think that's a perfectly valid interpretation, but I kind of thought he had been with the shrink lady, and if he was with her, he was probably with other people. So yeah. That idea makes a cameo in here. Thanks to all the reviewers. : )**_

***

_Early March, 2008_

Jane still wore his wedding ring.

He had tried to take it off. Almost a year after his wife died, when he had just left the hospital after his breakdown, he thought he might be able to do it. It had, after all, been months, and he had just had his very brief fling with Sophie. He thought he might be able to do it then.

He'd kept if off for four days, the air getting to that part of his finger feeling unnaturally cold. That band in his skin was much paler than the rest of him, and when he noticed the tan line filling in, he hastily put the ring back on. It was too cold without it, and the idea of that part of his finger going back to the same color as the rest of him felt like he was erasing her. He couldn't do it.

About a year and a half later, he tried it again. At this point it had been two and a half years since his wife died, and he was going through the motions. He went out to bars like he was carefree and twenty-five again, except he wasn't twenty-five, and he wasn't carefree. He sometimes met women while he was drinking who were almost as lonely as he was. He would invite them to talk to him, he was always good for that, but he wouldn't talk about himself much. He would wake up the next morning in a bed that wasn't his, not remembering much, and would only feel a desperation to grab his pants and get the hell out of there. He was never rude, never mean about it, but he was always distant.

And after, he would always feel a guilt when he looked down, and saw his wedding ring. It was like cheating on his wife right in front of her. She wouldn't have approved, not for the fact that he was sleeping with people, but because he was doing it mindlessly, to fill a void, using people. He had no doubt she would want him to move on, and she wouldn't approve because he wasn't moving on, not with what he was doing.

They had talked about the possibility of one of them dying before, when they were warm and happy and in love with being married. It had seemed far away but she told him she would want him to be happy with someone new. "I love you so much," she had said, "That I would want you to be happy, even if it wasn't with me. I wouldn't want you to pine, it would destroy you." He had taken that for what it was, probably true to what she thought, but a conversation he never thought he would have to reflect back to. He had always thought that if she died before him they would be old anyway, and he could ride out the next five or ten years on his own before he died himself. As it was, he had been thirty-four years old when she died, and couldn't imagine being alone for the rest of his life, but couldn't imagine being with anyone else, either.

And now it had been over four years, and he would find himself twisting the ring around his finger sometimes, playing with it, toying with the idea of what it would be like to remove it. It had been like a part of him when he was married, and it still felt like a part of him now. He felt incomplete without it, but burdened with it. Taking it off meant letting her go. It meant moving into a new phase in his life, leaving the limbo stage and going into something new. It meant living for something besides his constant quest for revenge, but he didn't know what else there could be any more.

He had stopped going to bars late at night. Eventually it had stopped comforting him, the brief moments of human contact had only served to make him more sad, more empty.

He joked around with his co-workers and broke rules for the fun of it. He had become more disciplined in himself, monk-like, between his job, and his search for Red John. It was his life, it was the thing that kept his cells in line. He was still going through the motions, but the job and his mission lit something up in him, made him feel something like alive.

He liked his job with the CBI. He was good at it—he used the skills he'd always had to help solve cases. He wasn't a cop and didn't want to be, but loved the feeling of tinkering away at something, at manipulating it until it revealed itself to him.

And he liked his colleagues—Rigsby was young, and idealistic, in awe of him. Cho was funny and sarcastic and yet had something underneath it all, some iron in him that Jane didn't yet understand. And Lisbon was—you couldn't describe her. A heady of contradictions. Tough in her vulnerabilty. Confident in her fears. Beautiful and wanted you to notice it, but hated compliments. He couldn't get the measure of her, and he loved that.

But it felt temporary for him, this job. He wasn't like the others—Lisbon was a cop if he'd ever met one, she was born to do this. Cho was versatile and smart enough to do almost anything, but he'd fallen on this, and loved it. Rigsby was built for the job, just clever enough and just boorish enough to have the potential to be great at it. But he couldn't imagine doing it for forever, all he could see was Red John up ahead of him, and his wife and daughter behind.

His colleagues had a future, they all did. He could see it for them, even if they couldn't.

He didn't. He had Red John, revenge, and a life that might be spent in a jail cell after he killed him.

And a wedding ring he couldn't take off.

***

Next Chapter: "Rigsby wanted Pizza."


	11. Pizza

_**In the Russett Potatoes episode, they revealed the CBI tradition of "Case closed pizza." This is about what first started that tradition. It seems like an addition Rigsby would dream up, doesn't it? It gets pretty Jane/Lisbon at the end, because I'm hopeless. Even Rigsby chapters become J/L. : )**_

_**Please R&R.**_

***

_Mid-March, 2008_

Rigsby wanted pizza.

It would have come as no surprise—he ate constantly, he always snacked between meals. Hell, he snacked between snacks. It was a wonder he wasn't three hundred pounds by now.

But he also wanted ceremony—they had just solved a difficult case, a case involving the mayor's office that Minelli had insisted they take. His boss had been wary—hell, she was wary of everything, but it had gone off well enough. Sure, Jane had been Jane, he seemed to have a two-stunt quota per case, but they still had their jobs, they all did. It seemed like a cause for celebration, but he had quickly learned that the CBI didn't celebrate. They solved cases.

There was a genuine affection, genuine respect between all of them—Cho and Lisbon's mutual , unspoken trust, Jane and Cho's underlying understanding, and Lisbon and Jane's—whatever the hell that was. But there was little camraderie, and no enjoying their accomplishments. No marking the occasions of solving a case with anything except opening a file to solve a new one.

Food had always been his favorite way of celebrating. And anyway, it wasn't like he could bring in a bottle of red wine like he might want to for them to toast after they solved cases. Something told him Lisbon might have a problem with that. But pizza—pizza was harmless.

"Hey, boss," he called. Lisbon was sitting across from him, on Jane's couch, just to stick it to him. She was smiling a little and reading a file. That subtle grin was the closest she ever seemed to come to feeling accomplishment.

She looked up at him, waited.

"I was thinking..." he stopped, began again. "I was thinking we should order out. Get some pizza. Maybe it can be, like, a new tradition—case closed pizza."

She was still smiling, that was a good sign. Cho looked up from his paperwork to watch the exchange. Jane had dragged Lisbon's big swivelly chair from her office when he noticed she was on his couch, and he rolled around on the hardwood floor.

"Case closed pizza," she said, her voice an ironic, sarcastic tone that she ususally saved for Jane. "And what would be the point of that, Rigsby?"

"Team building," he said, without missing a beat. "We can trade off on who buys it. So one person doesn't, you know, always get stuck with it."

Lisbon entirely closed her file now, to look him full on in the eyes. Hers were brimming with the typical terrifying fierceness that was always there, but still, a smile. "So what you're saying, then," she said, shaking her head at him, "Is that you want pizza _every single time_ we solve a case, which is pretty damn often, thank god, but you want to not have to pay for it most of the time?" She was laughing now, she was on a roll. "Is there not enough food in the refrigerator for you to celebrate with?"

Jane slid over to the couch and put a heavy hand on the bosses shoulder. "Touche, Lisbon. Beautifully done. Just enough joking so that Rigsby doesn't run and hide in a supply closet, and just enough seriousness so that he'll know you mean it. An art form, truly." He turned to Rigsby then, adopted his gameshow host voice. He balled up his fist, and put an imaginary microphone in front of Rigsby's mouth. "So, you've just been shut down by Lisbon. What are you going to do now?"

"Ask again," Rigsby said.

"Look," Lisbon replied. "If you want to order pizza every time we solve a case, you do that. Eat to your heart's content. Truly. I just won't be partaking."

"Why not?" he asked.

Jane turned back to face Lisbon, put his imaginary microphone under her chin. "Yes, Lisbon, why not?" He echoed.

Lisbon pushed at Jane's hand, annoyed. It remained there. He gave Lisbon's chin a teasing pluck. She smacked his hand, and he moved it away. He smiled. She reluctantly smiled back. Rigsby watched the non-verbal exchange, briefly fascinated by it, before remembering he had an important task at hand. Case-closed pizza.

"It's not healthy," Lisbon finally said. "That's all."

"Ah," said Jane. "It's a woman thing."

Rigsby was confused. "A woman thing?"

"Our dear Lisbon is watching her figure." He quirked his eyebrows at the boss. "Isn't that right?"

Lisbon blushed. She actually blushed. Rigsby was amazed by it—it had been over a month now, and he'd never seen it. Lisbon seemed to be made of steel.

"I'm not watching my figure. It's just..." She was actually biting her nails now, too. "You guys order so much damn fast food. It's greasy. And I keep having to add miles to my run to keep up with it."

Cho broke in then, from feet away. "You run, boss?" He asked incredulously.

She nodded.

"_When?"_

It was a fair question. Lisbon was always there in the morning when Rigsby first got in. She was still there after he left at night. She had to sleep some time. When, exactly, would she run?

Jane answered for her, a habit Rigsby knew she hated. "Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays," he piped up.

"How the _hell_ do you know that?" She looked genuinely annoyed now.

"You always come in with a bottle of water and your hair back on Tuesdays and Thursdays," he said, shrugging. "I never realized what that meant before. And Saturdays—you have to run on the weekend some time, and even though you don't go to church you're a lapsed Catholic, so that leaves out Sunday."

She rolled her eyes, opened her file again. Great.

"Personally," Jane said, "I think there's no need for it."

"No need for what?" She asked, not looking up.

"Worrying so much about fast food. You have a perfectly nice figure, Lisbon." He winked at her. She swatted at him with the manilla folder. She looked like her old, angry self again, steel in her eyes. You could always count on Jane to take it there.

"Be a little more unprofessional, Jane, by all means." She said.

He grinned again, replied provacatively, "You're flattered."

"Shut up. I swear to god, Jane. You ever heard of Justifiable?"

Jane laughed. "Alright, alright. But anyway. Maybe there's something to you not eating fast food. It's clearly working out well for you." He was using that suggestive voice again.

Lisbon was off the couch and across the room in three seconds flat, Rigsby swore he saw smoke settling where she had just been. Jane resumed his position on the couch.

Lisbon came back over to Rigsby with her cell phone in her hand. "Sausage? Pepperoni?" She asked. "Hell, I'll get both. I'm paying."

He had won.

He could have sworn he saw Jane wink at him before he closed his eyes on the couch.

***

Next Chapter: "Lisbon wasn't sleeping."


	12. Sleeping

_**This was kind of fun to write. I'm constantly scared of getting OOC whenever I write Jane/Lisbon flirting, and this is no exception. This chapter is when Lisbon finds out about Jane's insomnia. I like reviews. Thanks to all the reviewers so far.**_

***

_Early April, 2008_

Lisbon wasn't sleeping.

The team was working a case in a quaint little town in Oregon, and staying in a picturesque bed and breakfast near the state line. It was after one in the morning, and Lisbon was finding her room suddenly suffocating, looking up into the depths of the ceiling in the dark, unable to sleep.

She decided she could go for a cup of tea, she was always game for some caffeine, and remembered the little nook in the lobby that kept hot water on at all hours, and little serving plates of scones and muffins. She slid on a pair of slippers and crept out of the door, past the room Cho and Rigsby were sharing, down the stairs.

She was surprised to find Jane in the lobby, feet up in the recliner like he might have been at work, still wearing a gray suit and a blank expression, looking up into the light fixtures.

"Hey, Lisbon," he called, and got up to follow her. He looked like it might have been the middle of the afternoon.

"So, Jane, is that suit never-ending for you?" she asked him.

For a moment he looked confused.

"I mean, it's three in the morning. You sleep in that thing?"

He leaned against the wall, arms crossed. "No. I don't sleep in it."

It took her a minute to realize the significance of that statement, mulling it over as she poured hot water into a tiny styrophoam cup. Jane never just said what he had to say. He felt the need to be short and cryptic when a detailed explanation was required, and the need to be long-winded when you wanted him to shut the hell up.

"You don't sleep," she said, not a question.

He shrugged, good-naturedly. He grinned. "Not much," he said.

She went back in her head. She tried to remember a single time she had gone by Jane on the couch when his eyes were closed when she had to actually wake him up. She couldn't think of one. He was trying to grab a few seconds here and there, and she thought he was most likely failing miserably.

"Don't look so grave, Teresa. It doesn't suit you."

She rolled her eyes, looked around the wooden cabinet for a tea bag. "You know you don't call me that, Jane."

He grinned again, full of energy. Like it wasn't past one in the morning, like he hadn't worked a ten-hour day the day before, like he wouldn't work one again in a few hours. "We're off hours, _Teresa_."

The look she shot him was deadly, and he put his hands up in mock surrender. "Alright, alright. But something tells me there will come a time when you won't mind it so much," he said. She had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but didn't ask.

"Well, until that time comes, which I doubt it will, don't."

Jane was closer to her now, behind her, reaching around her to grab the tea bag she had just extracted from the cabinet. He wasn't offended. Jane never got offended. It was a quality in him she had always liked.

"Earl Grey?" he asked, picking it up. He looked at her face over her left shoulder."Seriously? I wouldn't have pegged you for Earl Grey, Lisbon."

"Shut up, it's my favorite," she returned, snatching it from his hand. He didn't move away. She was suddenly aware that she was wearing a wife-beater. Her shoulders were out. Jesus Christ. She was almost naked. She wished the shirt had a higher neckline. Like up to her nose.

"It's for old men. I think it comes with a complimentary cane," he teased heartily. He was leaning against the wall now, and she could breathe again. "And no worries, Lisbon. Your night time attire is very tame."

She closed her eyes. "Bite me." Opened them again. She wasn't going to let Jane ruin a perfectly good cup of tea. "And I know you aren't talking about someone having old man tastes. You're leaving yourself awfully vulnerable, there."

He looked amused. "How so?"

She laughed. "Jane, you wear three-piece suits to work in California. Vests, for Christ's sake. And those shoes you love so much look like they might have actually seen combat in Korea."

He looked down at himself.

"And I like Earl Grey, canes or no canes," she continued. "It's minty."

She turned back around, feeling saucy, and poured some sugar in her tea. She went to take a scone, but Jane stopped her.

"They refill every fourty-five minutes. They should be coming any time with fresh ones."

As if on cue, a hotel employee appreared, carrying a big plate of fresh scones. She took one, chocolate-chip, and sat in the lobby next to Jane's recliner. He sat with her, leaning back. She noticed for the first time how drawn he looked, the bags under his eyes, how glassy they were. She wondered how she hadn't put it together before. Jane just always had so much boundless energy that it deflected those sorts of questions.

"Did you always have trouble sleeping?" She asked him.

He shrugged. "I always stayed up late. Even when I was a kid. But it's obviously worse, you know, since... then."

"So all those times you're sleeping on the couch, and I'm having conversations with Cho or Rigsby?"

He laughed wickedly. "Every word," he said.

She should have been annoyed but wasn't. She sipped at her tea, old-man tea, she remembered him saying, and it made her smile. It was a bizarre new piece in the Jane puzzle, a puzzle which she hadn't realized until now that she was putting together. Jane wasn't the type of person that just let you see him, even though with his genial personality it seemed like that at first. He was someone who unfolded before you, bit by bit, almost unwillingly. She thought she might have been the same way. In fact, she was sure she was.

He moved from the recliner to sit next to her on the couch. "You see that guy there?" He asked her.

He was pointing out a middle-aged bald man carrying a briefcase. He was wearing a rumpled black suit, and leaving the hotel. "Yeah."

"He just cheated on his wife," he informed her. "And left his wedding ring in the hotel room. He'll be back later to get it."

She chuckled. "And how do you know that, Jane?"

He crossed his legs. "I'm psychic. Haven't you heard?"

"Sometimes, Jane, I swear you're making things up. Just because you know we won't call you on it."

He didn't look annoyed in the slightest. "Oh yeah? So why don't you go over there and ask him?"

She rolled her eyes. "Just tell me how you know that."

He sat up. He scooted closer on the couch, put his head next to hers conspiratorially. "Okay," he said. "Number one, whenever anyone leaves a hotel at one-thirty in the morning you should be suspicious. It's shady. I'm just saying."

She nodded. "How do you know he left the ring?"

"It's hard to commit adultery with a wedding ring on. And he definitely normally wears it—check out that tan line."

She noticed it. "Okay. But how do you know the ring isn't in his pocket, or his briefcase?"

"You don't put your wedding ring in your pants pocket. You're scared it will fall out and under the bed, right? And have you ever tried to open a briefcase in a moment of passion? Total mood-killer."

She laughed.

He continued. "And anyway, he looks like he knows he forgot something. He's fidgiting. He just can't put his finger on what." Jane leaned back again. "He'll be back, but not for a while, I'd say. He'll get all the way home, and come back here before the sun comes up, quite frantic, I'd gather."

Lisbon drained the last bit of her tea. "Is that what you do all the time? People watch?"

Jane shrugged. "Sometimes. It's fun. You should try it."

"I used to when I was a kid. I used to make up names for people at the check-out counter when I worked at the supermarket. Stories about their lives." She didn't know why she gave Jane that personal bit.

"Really?" His face lit up. "And what's our friend with the ring's name?"

She considered. He looked distinguished at first glance, but at second, he seemed like a little boy playing dress-up. "Robert," she said. "But people have called him Bobby his whole life. He wants them to call him by his full name because it's more important-sounding, but no one can take him seriously."

He looked at her as if she had said something immensly interesting. As much as she hated to admit it, she enjoyed it. Jane was a character, in every sense of the word. The idea that she was enough of a character for him to find her illuminating was oddly flattering. Not that she'd ever tell him that.

"Huh," he said. "Well, we don't know what his name is, but you might be onto something, Lisbon. Bravo."

"Don't patronize me."

"Not at all."

She turned toward him on the couch. "And what do you know about me, Jane? Since you do this all the time?"

He smiled at her. "Not nearly as much as you're afraid I do."

***

"You're tired," Jane said, bemusement tinged in his voice.

Lisbon fought back a yawn. It was after four. She had been on this couch with him for over two hours. Shockingly, she was on her sixth cup of Earl Grey ("I swear, Lisbon, that stuff makes you old," Jane had said.) More shockingly, she didn't want to kill him.

"I'm not," she said. "I'm fine."

"You can go to bed, you know. You've been great company. But I'm fine."

"I'm not staying awake for you," she replied defensively.

He raised his eyebrows in wordless contradiction.

_Maybe a little_, she thought, but kept it to herself. "It must be hard," she said, quietly. "You must be tired all the time."

He smiled at her. It wasn't his cocky smile, or his triumphant one when he figured something out, or the one he wore when he was teasing her. It was something else. "Sometimes. But, you know, there's something to be said for insomnia."

"Oh yeah?" She was laying on the arm of the couch now, tired in her voice.

"Sure. It's a different world at night. You can go walking in the quiet. It's nice. Even the most mundane settings become more interesting, almost magical."

She was smiling now, too sleepy to put her mask entirely on her face.

"Maybe sometime..." he stopped.

"Maybe sometime what?" She asked.

"Maybe another time, we can walk. If we're in a hotel, if we're away, if you aren't asleep. I can show you."

She was still smiling. "Maybe," she said, not knowing exactly what she was agreeing to.

"And people are different at night," he said. "Co-workers that are crabby during the day almost become... human."

"Shut up, Jane."

"Our friend is back," Jane said suddenly. "Bobby."

Lisbon turned around to see the man in the rumpled suit had come back, was frantically flapping through the lobby to the Customer Service desk.

"Can I help you, sir?"

"I left my wedding ring in one of your rooms. 208."

Jane was laughing, and Lisbon rolled her eyes. He was always right. _Always_ right.

She hated it.

***

The next Monday, she came into work to find that Jane had beaten her there. Her office door was open, left ajar. Lisbon walked to her desk, to find a huge box of three-hundred Earl Grey tea bags sitting on top of her paper work. And a wooden cane laying on top of it.

"I told you," came a voice from her doorway. "The cane is practically complimentary."

It was going to be a good day.

***

Next Chapter: "Cho liked his boss."


	13. Boss

_**So I think that Cho and Lisbon have an interesting dynamic. They don't show it much, but she seems to trust him more than she trusts the others, and he seems to admire her. That's how I watch it, anyway. So I wanted to give them a cute scene together. This takes place before Chapter 1, which I know is weird, considering how I'm going in order by dates, but it somehow didn't seem to fit until now. I don't know. I like it here, but feel free to disagree.**_

***

_April 20, 2007_

Cho liked his boss.

Sure, she was standoffish, she was intimidating. She was quick to anger, and even quicker to distance. She wasn't particularly warm or comforting; she was very funny, had a quick wit, but didn't show it often. Lisbon and Cho seldom talked about anything personal, they were generally all business. He didn't know much about her beyond the job, and she didn't know much about him, either.

But he knew, implicitly, that he liked her.

She was great at her job. She was a good boss, even though riddled with self-doubt that he thought he saw in her occasionally. She worked hard, she never seemed to get tired. She didn't take crap from anyone, she didn't let anyone disrespect her, or even him, for that matter. She was always a step ahead of everything, and he still found himself in awe of that. Nothing and no one ever put her on her heels.

And yet there was something in her that she didn't let him see, didn't let anyone see. There was a whole other person there, below the surface, who floated up occasionally. Cho would sometimes get a fleeting glimpse of her, before she went back down again. Lisbon was complex. And he liked that.

He was pretty sure she liked him, too, at least in some way—she had fought Minelli hard three months before when the Department wanted to transfer him. She wouldn't allow it. The others in their unit came and went, but Lisbon held onto Cho in a death grip.

She gave him almost all of the interrogations, she trusted his opinion almost as much as she trusted her own. She smiled at him when he made one of his trademark sarcastic comments, and brought him cups of coffee on the mornings she brought in some for herself. He would nod and thank her, and she would give him a quick ghost of a smile before heading into her office.

They had been working together for eleven months, and had fallen into some sort of a pattern. They solved cases. They were good at that. They teamed up to argue with Minelli. They ordered out sometimes when the case load was too great to leave—he told her once that he hated Pineapple pizza, and after that, he could have sworn she ordered it all the time. It was things like that that convinced him that she was funny, that there was something else there, there had to be.

He was surprised, earlier that morning, when Minelli mentioned to him that it was Lisbon's birthday. She hadn't said anything about it, though looking back he wasn't surprised she hadn't—they didn't talk about things like that. He had turned twenty-eight the previous September, and hadn't said a word to her about it. He'd gone to visit his mother that night, who had made him a cake like she did every year, like he was still a little boy. And he certainly wasn't one to argue with cake.

it was after eleven at night now, and he was finishing up a report from a previous case, waiting for the boss to come back. She had gone up to another floor to make copies of something, and he heard her coming down the stairs, heard her slide into her office, and waited.

She was standing above him at his desk a minute later, she was smiling. A real smile, a rare one. It was kind of nice.

"What's got you so happy, boss?" he asked, teasingly.

She laid a cupcake on his desk, a chocolate one with sprinkles. It had a candle sticking out of it. And a note next to it that read, _I've got a lighter. Come to my desk before you eat this. –C._

"Oh, that," he said evenly, as if he had forgotten about it. He rooted through his desk for the lighter. It was unused, he had bought it with the cupcake earlier that day.

"How did you get that thing through security?" Lisbon asked.

"The cupcake?" He grinned. "It's not on the contraband list, not yet, anyway."

She rolled her eyes at him, and pulled up a chair to his desk. "You know what I meant. I can't even get a safety pin through the Metal Detector, let alone a lighter."

"What you don't know won't hurt you, boss." He lit the candle on the cupcake. "Be fast about it, huh? I'm pretty sure fire is against regulation."

She leaned over it, the candle lit up her face in the half-dark. They were the only two left here. She blew it out.

"Who told you it was my birthday?" She asked.

"Minelli."

"Minelli talks too much," she said, but looked pleased. She peeled off a little piece of it, and put it into her mouth.

"Can I ask how old you are?" He asked.

She laughed, covering her mouth. "Didn't anyone ever tell you that you don't ask women their ages?"

He shrugged, awkwardly. "I thought that only applied when a woman was unattractive, or old, or both. Which you clearly aren't."

She tilted her head to the side. Her dark hair fell over her right shoulder. Her green eyes somehow looked brighter in the dark. "That might be the most roundabout compliment I've even gotten, Cho, but I'm still going to say thank you."

He laughed. "I've never been good at complimenting women," he said, resigned. "I'm horrible at it."

She laughed, too. "You just have to be genuine about it, is all. And I think you are."

"You give roundabout compliments too, huh?"

"Something like that."

She peeled off a piece of the cupcake and offered it to him. He took it. It was a good one. He'd have to go to that bakery again. "Well anyway, Happy Birthday, boss."

She had just finished off the last little bit of it, and wiped a few stray crumbs from her jeans. She stood, picked up her bag from the floor.

"This was nice, Cho," she said. "Really nice."

"Buying you a two-dollar cupcake?"

"You know what I mean. It was..." she stopped, seeming to search for a word. "Sweet," she finished.

He grinned. It was that thing he sensed from Lisbon, that thing under the surface that he thought might be there, that whole different person. He thought that this was the closest he had ever come to seeing it, and he almost wanted someone to bring it out of her entirely, because he didn't. He liked them the way they were, and didn't want to do it himself. He didn't think he could, anyway.

"It's no problem, boss."

She nodded, turned, walked away. She turned back suddenly, gracefully, on the balls of her feet. Her hair swished behind her. She looked lighter somehow. She put one hand on his desk to steady herself, and she was smiling again, a full, radiant sort of smile.

"Thirty-four," she said. "I'm thirty-four."

***

_September 4, 2007_

Cho was twenty-nine.

He walked into the office that morning, over to his desk. It was Jane's sixth day, and he was sitting nearby, pointing.

"You have a present on your desk," he said. He had that look on his face, like he was trying to work something out. He looked from Cho to the bosses office, and back again.

It was a cupcake, a strawberry one. He didn't remember telling Lisbon his birthday, she must have asked around. There was a candle in it, and a note beside it.

_I don't have a lighter_, it read, _so enjoy._

***

Next Chapter: "Lisbon was thirty-five."


	14. Thirty five

_**Okay. I'm going to start this by saying that I'm eighteen, and no, I don't think thirty-five is old. I don't even really agree with the rhapsody I have Lisbon go on at the end of this chapter (you'll know what I mean). I just thought it kind of fit. Also, this chapter was going to have Lisbon talk about her fears of getting older and not being able to start a family with Jane, but then I realized that that is SO not something you would complain to Jane about. So yeah. This chapter is about how Lisbon can't tell Jane everything. Also, there's a nod to something I mentioned in Chapter nine, Lisbon loving Dean Martin. It's a character trait of mine I've given to her. Thanks to all the reviewers.**_

***

_April 20, 2008_

Lisbon was thirty-five.

She hadn't thought about it before, but thirty-five was infinitely older than thirty-four. She couldn't explain it. She had woken up that morning to a world that suddenly seemed different. She'd looked down at herself. All things considered, she aged pretty well. Her skin was still nice. Nothing was sagging. She was the same jean size she was in high school, maybe even a size or two smaller. But being thirty-five was different than being thirty-four.

She'd gotten to work early, to find that Cho and Jane were already there. Neither of them said anything to her about it—Cho cocked his head and gave her his typical, "Morning, boss." Jane nodded genially at her. She went into her office to find a cupcake on her desk. She flashed Cho a quick appreciative grin, to which he bobbed his head and smiled back. It was nice.

The day went on. Rigsby brought her coffee when he got in, which he had never done before. It came from the expensive specialty shop up the street, and had probably cost him at least five bucks. It was fixed incorrectly—too much sugar and not enough cream—but she thanked him, and downed it as best she could, which seemed to make him happy.

At noon, Cho and Rigsby went out for lunch. The two had become fast friends, and their lunch dates were a regular thing. Jane sometimes joined them, but on this day he didn't. He walked into her office unnanounced. She was used to it by now. He sat in one of the chairs in front of her desk, and waited for her to acknowledge him.

"What do you want, Jane?"

He grinned. "It's your birthday," he said.

She rolled her eyes, not looking up from her computer. "Tell me something I don't know."

"It's a big one."

She looked up. Only Cho knew her age. If he'd told Jane, so help her, he was a dead man. "Did Cho tell you how old I am?"

"Of course not," he replied. "I didn't even try. He'd be too scared you'd kill him."

She said nothing. She always knew Cho was a smart guy.

"But you're distant today."

She went back to typing, and not looking at him. "I'm distant every day."

"A different kind of distant." He paused. "Sad."

Her hands stopped on the keyboard, but she still didn't look at him. "I don't want to talk about it, Jane."

He nodded. "Okay. I'll talk. You're feeling like you're getting older, and you haven't achieved anything. Personally, that is. Professionally, you're great, but personally, you're wondering if you're wasting your life. If you're running out of time."

"Don't you have work to do?" She didn't want to talk about this, not with Jane. Not with Jane, of all the people in the world, all the people in her unit. Not about this. Not with him.

He smiled. She hated it. "I'm on lunch."

"Don't you have lunch to eat?"

"No." He paused. He tilted the chair back on two legs. "Are you going to answer me?"

"I don't know why I ever answer you, Jane. You have conversations with yourself." She frowned. She wished she hadn't eaten all of Cho's cupcake at breakfast. She could go for something sweet now.

"You don't want to talk to me." He sounded surprised, and she couldn't, for the life of her, figure out why.

"You know, Jane, you're brilliant. This is what we pay you for."

He looked amused, like he always did when she got sarcastic with him. He never got offended. She had always liked that about him, but now she was beginning to see the darker side of that trait. Never being offended meant that he never, ever, took hints. She thought about it. Jane bypassed subtlety like it was nothing, and because he didn't get upset when someone tried to push him away, he almost always eventually got what he wanted.

"Well, anyway," he said. "I didn't really come in to bother you."

She raised her eyebrows at him, and he elaborated.

"I mean, I kind of did, but that's not the big reason. I came to give you this."

He stood and put a little parcel on her desk, wrapped in something that looked like newspaper. Sloppily, but he was a man, and what could you really expect? It was bound with duct tape. There was a little Christmas bow on it. It was kind of cute.

She stopped typing, she opened it. It was a Dean Martin CD.

She smiled a little, she couldn't help herself. "Why did you get me this?"

He leaned against her doorway. "You were so happy when they played Sway that night. I just figured..."

She smiled, and it felt weird. "How did you know I didn't already have it?"

"Come on, Lisbon, it's what you pay me for." He reached across her desk, and squeezed her hand. She was too surprised to pull hers away. It was warm, it was nice. "Happy Birthday. Even if you won't talk to me about it, I hope you'll stop being sad." His voice was sweet now. Not probing, not cocky. Sweet.

She thought about it, long after he was gone, long after he left the office to go home. The reason she couldn't confide in Jane.

Thirty-five was much older than thirty-four. She wasn't married, she didn't have children. She had always sworn that she wouldn't be one of those parents who still had children in her house past the fifty-five mark, that she wouldn't be one of those parents who brought their kid to the play ground, and had people ask her how old her granddaughter was. And yet she was scaring it to death. She could see it, she was in her mid-thirties now, she was almost in her late-thirties. All she ever did was work. It was all she could see herself doing in the forseeable future. It would be unfair to saddle a husband with that, to saddle a child with a mother who was never home.

And she didn't know how to do it anyway, how to go out, how to conduct a successful relationship. She hadn't been in one in years. She was scared she would never learn how.

And yet she couldn't talk about it with Jane. She couldn't imagine complaining about not starting a family with a man who had had one and lost his.

It just seemed wrong.

***

Next Chapter: "Cho and Rigsby were kindred spirits."


	15. Kindred Spirits

_**It's reasonably self explanatory. It's about Cho and Rigsby's relationship. I find the two of them funny. Thanks to all the reviewers. **_

***

_Early May, 2008_

Cho and Rigsby were kindred spirits.

Cho had been working with the CBI, with Lisbon, for two years. He had never met anyone quite as solemn as his boss when he first transferred to the unit, and had never met anone as veiled and haunted as Jane was when he had first started some eight months before. But Rigsby—Rigsby was like him. Maybe he talked a little more, was a little younger, but Cho had never been so relieved to see a normal person as he was when Risgby started working with them.

Not that he didn't like his boss, not that he didn't like Jane. But they were so heavy, both of them, that Rigsby was an utter relief.

It was a Friday night, just after seven. Cho and Rigsby had plans to go bowling after it came up on a case, and Rigsby had sworn he could wipe the floor with him. Cho was trying, he knew most likely in vain, to get the boss to come with them.

"Come on," he wheedled. "You need to get out more."

She shook her head. "I don't want to intrude on you and Rigsby's man-date. If you guys want to start cuddling, and it's totally alright if you do—that would just be awkward for me." She was smiling a predatory smile she always did when she scored a point, but looked firm. Jane walked up to them, jabbed her in the side. She elbowed him in the stomach in retaliation.

"Will you go with us, Jane?" Rigsby asked. If Jane went, Lisbon probably would too. Jane was much more skilled at persuading her than they were.

"Go where?"

Lisbon explained, still wearing the predatory look. "Cho and his girlfriend here have a Friday-night bowling engagement."

Rigsby's eyes grew wide. "Hey! Why am I the girlfriend?"

Jane cocked his head to the side, seeming to try the idea on. "I see that," he said.

Rigsby frowned. "Is Cho more manly than me?"

Cho laughed. "It's okay."

"No, it's not. Why does he get to be the boyfriend?" Rigsby looked genuinely offended, and Lisbon put up her hands in mock surrender.

"Rigsby is very sensitive about his masculinity, Lisbon. You have to be careful," Jane chirped. He was sitting on Cho's desk. "I'm not in tonight. Looks like it's just the two of you."

"The way nature intended it," Lisbon put in, heading back into her office.

***

"Do you really think you're more manly than me?"

They were sitting at the bowling alley, eating pizza, between games. They had split the first two, and Cho couldn't abide a tie. Rigsby couldn't either.

"Of course I do."

Rigsby made a little pout with his mouth, and picked up yet another piece of pizza. It was just the two of them, and Rigsby had insisted on getting an entire pizza. Cho understood why now, realizing that this was his fifth slice. The guy could eat like no other.

"What do you think about it here so far?" Cho heard himself ask. He'd been meaning to ask Rigsby what his impressions of the CBI were: he had always wondered what the three of them would look like to a relatively normal outsider.

Somehow Rigsby understood the question implicitly, and smiled. "I've gotten used to you guys. You were weird at first."

"We were?" Cho asked.

"Not you so much," he amended. "But Boss and Jane..." he paused. "They're still weird."

Cho laughed. "How so?" He asked, even though he knew.

"Lisbon is so back and forth between funny and normal, and terrifying. And Jane is just so..." He shrugged. "Jane." He took another bite of his pizza. "And then the two of them together are just—I don't know. Different than with the rest of us. I don't know what it is. There's so much with them you don't see. Even though I like them. I mean, they're both great." Rigsby shook his head. "But I can't imagine how weird it would be for me if you weren't here. It wouldn't be as fun, I don't think."

It was a shrewd observation, if not entirely articulated. It was the reason Cho was so glad to see Rigsby every day. Jane and the boss were too much sometimes, and together they had this undercurrent, this vibe that they didn't leave him out of, but that he didn't entirely understand. He'd felt older with them, and that wasn't always bad, but Rigsby's addition to the team had made the whole atmosphere of the CBI younger. Lighter.

"And you wonder why you're the girlfriend," Cho said lightly, "As you commiserate with me about how I make your day brighter."

"Shut up. You asked." He looked uncomfortable now. He picked up his sixth slice of pizza.

"You done eating yet? Jesus Christ. I really think we should have a new policy on paying for food."

"Why?"

"We always go half. But you always eat three-fourths of whatever we get. It's just wrong."

Rigsby rolled his eyes. "Since you insist that I'm the woman in this relationship, you should really be relieved I'm paying for anything. Man up, Cho."

***

They played the third game, and Rigsby took it. Cho insisted on a fourth, which he won. It went on and on like that until the eighth, by which time they had split the games four and four. The bowling alley mercifully closed after that, which was a good thing, Cho thought, because it was getting ridiculous.

They parted at ten, neither in the mood to go to the bar like they normally did on Friday nights, the bar they had gone to with Jane and Lisbon that one time, but not at all since then.

Cho thought about Rigsby's impressions of the team that Monday, when he walked in and sat with Jane, who explained to him how the Patrol Guard's hemmed pants somehow meant that he got lucky the night before, and when Cho gave Lisbon a coffee that he had bought for her when he bought his own, and she gave him a consise nod of appreciation. Rigsby came in a few minutes later, gushing about a little toy race car he was holding, that he had found on the stoop in front of his apartment. Lisbon laughed at him over her cup of coffee, and Jane started on about how Rigsby was trying to relive his childhood because his father had been overbearing, and other things he tuned out as they became too long-winded.

It made him smile. They felt like a complete team.

Like parts of a whole.

***

Next Chapter: "Lisbon was intimidating."


	16. Intimidating

_**In the last chapter, I had Rigsby trying to entirely articulate Jane and Lisbon's dynamic, and he can't do it. This is more of that, because who can? Thanks to the reviewers.**_

***

_Mid-May, 2008_

Lisbon was intimidating.

Rigsby knew he was quick to be intimidated by women—it was an old habit, dating back to being a little boy, when Katie Lampenelli had kicked him directly between the legs in the school yard one day, after he tried to kiss her. After that, he was wary. He thought that he was intimidated by his boss in much the same way—she was about at brisk and no-nonsense as someone could be. Wrapped up in a package of a good-looking woman that he didn't even notice most of the time, because she was so terrifying.

Not that she was like that all the time. If he had to put money on it, he would guess that she liked him well enough. She playfully teased him a lot, more and more as the weeks and months went on, and had made Jane and Cho lay off when he first started, and they told him all kinds of lies about the CBI to scare him. Still, she was intimidating. Someone he wouldn't piss off, not if he had the choice.

Jane seemed to like that.

Rigsby knew that Jane turned everyone into a project—he had done it with Rigsby himself before he had even gotten there, profiled him through his signature before even meeting him. And he did it with Cho, too-- he sat on his desk constantly while he had to file the crime reports he hated, making small talk because Cho couldn't concentrate on two things at once. It was just something he did.

But Lisbon, she was a special project. Cho had described the way he acted with her once—"a bizarre sort of conquest"—and Rigsby thought it applied.

Rigsby wasn't like Jane. He wasn't given to sitting around and contemplating people. He let people be who they said they were, it didn't occur to him most of the time to consider what they might not say—what they might not want to give up. But he found himself doing it with the boss and Jane, more and more, wanting to know just what exactly it _was._ For one thing, the days in the CBI could be annoyingly slow. They had just solved a case. He needed something to do with himself, and Jane-- he never seemed bored. He had an endless supply of inspiration to keep him occupied—other people.

And for another, he couldn't get what he'd said to Cho a week before, when they were bowling, out of his head—he'd said Lisbon and Jane were different with each other than with the rest of them. That there was so much you didn't see, with both of them.

Jane was letting himself into Lisbon's office now (not knocking, he never knocked). He walked directly past her, to the mini refrigerator she kept beside her desk, and opened it. Rigsby distantly thought that what Jane had said on his first day was right, there was nothing good in it—salads, cans of diet coke, packages of string cheese. Lisbon turned around from the window, and snapped the refrigerator door closed. Her eyes were narrowed at him, she was saying something he couldn't hear, but he could guess wasn't pleasant. Jane smiled--that infuriating unphased smile, and left her office. He walked past Rigsby to his couch, still grinning.

He seemed to get off on it.

The boss didn't scare him, possibly because he wasn't a cop. He didn't plan to do this for the next fifteen years, Rigsby knew that. As soon as he had heard about Red John, about Jane's family, he had understood implicitly what it was about, why he was here.

Revenge. Not just catching Red John, but making him pay. Rigsby couldn't see Jane just handing over the man to law enforcement if they caught him, letting that be that, and skipping off into the sunset on his merry way. Because Rigsby couldn't do that himself. No, he was going to catch Red John, kill him, and that would be the end of his work with the CBI. At least, that was how he was sure Jane saw it.

And so Lisbon had no bearing on his career. He could prod at her as much as he pleased. And so he did.

And that was part of it, but Rigsby knew instinctively that that wasn't all of it.

Because that would get boring after a while, it had to. And Jane definitely wasn't bored. If anything, the two of them had become more and more—that was the thing. There wasn't a word for it. But more and more of whatever that thing was.

Rigsby liked his job. The CBI was great—he had to work hard, he always had to, but there was a prestige to it. He was twenty-seven years old and he wasn't just a cop, wasn't just a detective, but was an agent. It was great. And his co-workers were all young, were all quirky. They played off each other well. Together, they were absolutely cohesive, their dynamics fit—Cho and Rigsby's tendencies to bromance (a term Rigsby hated, but it applied), Lisbon and Cho, who mutually admired each other a great deal, Jane and Cho, who ribbed each other constantly, made stupid little bets, and Lisbon and Jane's tension, laying there, just below the surface. Sometimes popping above it. It all worked.

But he felt like Jane now, trying to dissect something. It didn't exactly fit him. He was an agent, and a good one. He had reasonable powers of deduction, but it wasn't what he did. He didn't try to look inside people, not often.

Lisbon left her office then, went to stand over Jane on the couch. She waited for him to open his eyes, and he didn't. Rigsby was somehow sure he knew she was there—he could probably smell her pefume, her shampoo, but he lay still, just to bother her.

"Jane," he heard her say. Her voice was harsh, harsher than it was when she addressed him, or Cho. With them it was more crisp, brisk, lacking intimacy. With Jane she was always preparing herself for a fight, for a battle of wills.

"Mmmm," he replied, not opening his eyes.

She planted a hand on her hip. "Wake up like you have a job, would you? Minelli's coming in. He hates to see you sleeping."

He opened his eyes. He was smiling, and the boss looked pissed. Something else with it, but mostly pissed. "Teresa, you of all people know I'm not asleep."

_Teresa?_ Seriously? Rigsby almost laughed. Lisbon didn't seem to have a first name. He couldn't imagine it. He could imagine her being born from her mother and her parents calling her by her last name as a baby before he could see them calling her Teresa. It was just weird.

She looked briefly embarrassed, there and gone in the next second, and he wondered just how she knew that. "Off the couch for today. It looks bad when Minelli comes in."

He stood, to walk with her to her office door. "Can I have a cheese stick?" He asked her.

She rolled her eyes, told him no, and went inside. She left the door cracked a little.

But when she sat down at her desk, she was smiling. His boss was smiling.

Jane made his way past him, seeming to note the concentration in his face and asked, "What are you thinking about, Rigsby?"

Rigsby wiped the pensieve look from his face, adopted a blank one. "I was wondering who was going to buy the case closed pizza," he said.

He heard a voice from inside the bosses office. The woman could hear like a bat. "You are, Rigsby," she said. "Stop being so damn cheap every time it's your turn." She paused, a brief wicked gleam in her eye. "And I could go for pineapple. No need to tell Cho." She paused again. She turned to Jane, who was trying to sneak back onto the brown couch. "And Jane, I swear to god, if I see you on that couch again today, it'll be in the back of a dump truck by tomorrow morning."

That was his boss. Back and forth between two people. Funny and personable, and then quick to tough and harsh.

As intimidating to him as Katie Lampenelli was in the second grade.

***

Next Chapter: "Lisbon was beautiful."


	17. Beautiful

_**Yay! Next Chapter. I don't know about this one. I liked writing it. It's a Jane/Lisbon joint. Please R&R.**_

***

_Early June, 2008___

Lisbon was beautiful.

There was something about the early summer-- the rising of a heavier, warmer sun, that seemed to improve her. Her skin tanned, she got little freckles on her cheeks. Her green eyes seemed to glow—they got brighter, her lips looked more pink, she somehow became more alive.

It was seven-thirty in the morning, and they were the first two at work—Jane had come in a half hour before to find Lisbon already sitting at her desk, three-quarters of the way through her mug of coffee. No matter how early he got there, she always seemed to get there first—he could count on one hand the number of times he'd beaten her here.

She was a woman naturally drawn to windows--he'd noticed as early as his first day that she did all of her work turned towards the one in her office, as if she couldn't bear to be inside when the sun was out. He thought now that this might be true, as he considered the way the sun lit her up—the subtle, early morning rays passing through her window and illuminating her face, the smooth skin at her neck and collarbone, the way it perked up her dark hair. She seemed to smile more with it.

Jane was sitting at the chair in front of her desk, reading the files as she finished with them. She didn't speak, which wasn't unusual. He didn't either, which was.

He was surprisingly rested. He went in and out of his insomnia, and had gotten a surprisingly good amount of sleep the past three nights. Jane didn't feel that jumpiness in his limbs that he frequently did when he hadn't slept—he wasn't restless. He felt normal, which was unusual, which was nice. He didn't observe frantically as he normally did, when he was over-tired and trying to occupy his mind. There wasn't his usual impishness, which he used to deal with the stress of not getting rest. There was just him. Watching her, in the early summer.

His wife hadn't liked the summer. She found the southern California sun too humid, too overbearing. She had always glowed in the winter, on the occasions they would go back east to Boston, where she had come from, to see her family. She loved the snow, and the cold would pinch her cheeks, make them pinker and more enticing. Her whole face would change, become even more beautiful than it normally was.

Lisbon was different from his wife.

He had already known that. His wife had been raised well, adored—she was bright, and open, and always happy. He had loved that about her. Jane didn't know the particulars of Lisbon's upbringing, but he knew that the same wasn't true of her. Lisbon was tougher, and harsher, more rough around the edges than his wife had been. She was an entirely different woman.

She wasn't cheerful, or outgoing. She wasn't maternal. She wasn't all that soft. But he admired the complexities when he looked for them—the contradictions. She was a whole person.

Lisbon glanced up then, catching him studying her. She didn't question it.

"Did you have breakfast?" She asked him. It was surprising, coming from her. He shook his head.

She went inside her little refrigerator, pulled out a muffin, and set it in front of him. She didn't give him time to say anything about it, bowing her head down again to read her file. She wasn't quite awake yet, and moved in slow, wondering motions, eyes wide, trying to wake herself up. More fluid, and sensual. But the sun leaking through her window seemed to make her happy—she wore a forrest green shirt that made her eyes jump out. And fitted jeans, which was rare.

It was something everyone wouldn't see, but it was the sign of a good mood.

Jane thought about it. Lisbon was interesting, and he'd always told himself that that was why he was drawn to her. It was mostly the truth. With most people, he read them, found out about them, and then satisfied himself that he knew enough. She wasn't like that, each layer seemed to reveal another layer, and then another one, and it was endless. She was an enigma, even though she was discoverable, readable—there was always something else to find.

He'd realized a while ago that he didn't want to know everything. Lisbon was breaking the habit of a lifetime—he hoped he'd never figure out all of her, while simultaeously trying to do just that.

He had always told himself that that was the only reason he was as fascinated as he was with her. He'd always told himself that the fact that Lisbon had such a delicately pretty face, and the greenest eyes he'd ever seen up close had nothing to do with it.

He was wrong.

He chewed on the muffin she had given him, and considered her some more. She looked up, caught him again.

"What, Jane?" She was trying to sound annoyed, but couldn't seem to muster the proper inflection on such a perfect morning, still glowing in the rising sun coming through the window.

He shrugged. He didn't lie. "I was just thinking that this is the only lighting that truly does you justice, Lisbon. It suits you amazingly."

She rolled her eyes, looked back down. She thought he was playing with her.

"I'm very serious," he said, frankly. He had never been shy. The sudden jolt of awareness, of attraction in him felt odd, felt different, felt good. "It lights you up."

She looked up again. "You can never give compliments like a normal person does, can you?" But she was smiling. It was soft in early morning, her face relaxed from sleepiness.

He shrugged. She was right. He couldn't.

They got back to work. She handed him a file, and he took it. They looked at each other, briefly, looked down. It was different, it wasn't uncomfortable. Maybe because Jane was rested. Maybe because he was on a full tank. Maybe any of those reasons, but he knew it wouldn't last. He didn't want it to. He liked the unpredictability of it, of her. He wouldn't want this all the time, just like he wouldn't want her to be closed off all the time, to be harsh, to be brisk. Not all the time.

It was just early in the summer, it was almost eight in the morning, and the fact that she was beautiful had just hit him like a Mack Truck. He had thought of his wife, too, and not felt like he was betraying her, another feeling he knew wouldn't last, but he would savor while it did.

He had had three consecutive nights of sleep for the first time in god knew how long. And he felt lighter.

Like he glowed in the summer, too.

***

Next Chapter: "They were little boys."


	18. Boys

_**Okay, I've been lazy. I'm not going to make May 1**__**st**__**. In my defense, I have a ridiculous amount of crap to do (finals, packing, projects) in the next week before I come home from school. This is a fun chapter. Mostly because the next two are angsty, so I wanted to write something happy first. Please review.**_

_**Oh, and a quick question, this relates to my next chapter—is Lisbon's father still alive? Do we know?**_

***

_Mid-June, 2008_

They were little boys.

Sitting in a bar on a Friday night—him, and Cho, and Jane. He and Cho spent nearly all their Friday nights together—going bowling, going to the bar, watching baseball—so much that it had become a running joke that neither of them ever dated because they were too busy dating each other. Lisbon hadn't joined them, though Rigsby hadn't expected her to. She had gone out with them that one time, and hadn't done so since. Jane sometimes joined them, once a month or so, as he did tonight.

When he did, there was an extra ceremony about it—it was more fun, Rigsby got more drunk, it was more everything. Jane was older than he and Cho were, but he was anything but a tempering influence. While Jane rarely drank in excess, he added something extra to them as a unit—there were suddenly three of them. A bona fide crew meeting for drinks, rather than two co-workers hanging out because they were bored on a Friday night. It made all the difference. And without Lisbon, who _was_ a tempering influence if he had ever met one, the CBI was an entirely different group.

Rigsby was drinking a rum and coke. A weak rum and coke because, despite his size, he had always been a lightweight. It had always been a problem, particularly during his college days. He was draining the last little bit of it, and turned to appraise Jane.

"I've got a question for you, if you won't mind answering it. Two, actually." he said. Slurred, really. He was having trouble hearing himself.

"Fire away," Jane replied. He was drinking a ginger ale. He was between beers. He was entirely sober.

"Remember when I first got here? And you knew all the stuff about me from my signature?"

Jane nodded.

"How?"

Jane laughed. He ordered another beer. "What made you think of that?"

Rigsby shrugged. "I don't remember." He didn't. There had been some reason, some correlation, but it had slipped out of his mind about as fast as it had enetered it.

"That's a pretty good sign that you've had enough to drink, Wayne."

"Wayne?" He was confused. He didn't mind being called by his first name, he didn't have that hang-up, but it sounded weird in Jane's mouth.

"I'm trying it out." He cocked his head to the side. "It doesn't fit. Okay. You're Rigsby again."

"Glad that's settled. So?"

Jane laughed. "Okay." He leaned back some. He was still wearing his suit, but had taken off the blazer. The vest was still on. It was like a part of him. Rigsby had never seen him without it. "I said you were younger than twenty-eight. That was because you wrote it fast and sloppy, but your handwriting itself on the rest of the application was neat. Like people do when they're younger and want to seem older."

Rigsby rolled his eyes. "Continue."

"And I said you were over six-three. The way it was written wasn't defined, like the pen was small in your hand. So you had to be a big guy. And I figured your dad was old-fashioned because it was tilted backward, really rugged, like it was trying to be hard and masculine but that's not really you. And also, the name Wayne wasn't exactly popular in, what, the early eighties? When you were born. But it's a strong, masculine name. I bet your mother didn't pick it."

"I'm masculine."

"Sure you are," Jane said, indulging him. Rigsby was really tired of having this argument.

"And that I was German?"

Jane shrugged. "Rigsby's a german name."

Rigsby leaned up, got a little bit closer to see Jane better. The bar was getting blurry in front of him, and so were his co-workers. Jane's eyes grew wide in amusement. "You had another question?" He prompted.

"Oh, yeah. Do you ever use your... you know, _skills_ to get you laid?"

Cho, who was somewhere between Rigsby and Jane on the drunk scale, gave a scandalized laugh. "Rigsby! Seriously. Come on."

"Like you weren't curious," Rigsby huffed.

"I wasn't," Cho said defensively.

Jane raised his eyebrows, and addressed the two of them. "Cho, you're lying. You've wanted to ask me that for months. Rigsby, I don't mind answering your question--" He polished off the last little bit of his Ginger Ale, "If you tell me why you want to know."

Rigsby shrugged. "I don't know. You're always trying to seduce someone. Like on cases, or with the boss..." Jane's face changed then, to utter confusion and amusement. "I just wondered if you..." he stopped, searched for the words. "Reaped the benefits, so to speak."

Jane looked entirely amused. "You think I'm trying to seduce our boss?"

That wasn't what he thought. There was some kind of correlation between her and this that he couldn't quite place, but it wasn't that. "No, not exactly." He stopped. "But that's the point. I don't think you are, but you seem like you're trying to do it anyway, but aren't going to follow through. Like you do it just to do it." He was too drunk to explain any better, and anyway, he doubted he'd even be able to entirely explain sober. "So I was just wondering if you ever use it to get laid. Because it's a tool. If you ever just use it for you."

Jane was still smiling. "Like you would, if you could?"

Rigsby shrugged. "Listen, I answered your question. So give." He leaned forward again, trying to see Jane better. Again. Cho laughed at him this time, turned to Jane.

"This is what he does when he gets too drunk. He can't see straight, and gets up in your personal space like you're a woman he wants to take home." He turned to Rigsby, lightly pushed his shoulder back from Jane. "I mean, at least you could buy him dinner first."

Jane shook his head. He chuckled. He ordered another beer. "I have to come out with you guys more often." He turned around to face the bar. "I used to use it. You know, when I was younger." He paused. "Although it was never just to 'get laid', not exclusively, anyway. I mean, I liked that part just as much as the next guy. But I kind of liked people. _Like _people," he amended. "And I used it to get close to them. Know more about them." He paused again, a wicked smile crossing his face. "Then get laid. But it's not worth all the conquest and thought if that's all it is." He turned to Rigsby. "That answer your question?"

Rigsby rolled his eyes. "No." He snickered. "Can you never just say yes or no like a normal person?"

***

"Answer the question."

"No."

Rigsby was good at pool.

Even drunk, even after two in the morning, even after a thirteen-hour work day. With any number of impairments, he was the best of the three.

Cho had gotten better in recent months—he and Rigsby went out too much, and played pool too much for him to not have picked up some sort of skill for it—but Jane was horrible. Always had been.

It was funny, really, to see Jane bad at something. He was usually great at everything: he was observant, he was perceptive. Rigsby couldn't remember a time before now when he had ever seen Jane truly struggle with anything.

Rigsby was setting up his next shot, ignoring Cho, who, as he got more drunk, got more juvenile.

"Just answer it!"

Cho was leaning against the wall now, sipping on a coke. He probably thought there was some sort of alcohol in it—he had asked Jane to go to the bar and get him a drink—but Jane had just bought him a soda. "Come on, Rigsby. If you had to have sex with one of the men from friends, who would you pick?"

Cho had been on this for a few minutes now, since he looked up at one of the bar televisions and had seen Friends playing on mute.

"None of them!" Rigsby took his shot. A little red ball went into the left corner hole. "If I had to have sex with someone from friends, I'd pick Jennifer Aniston."

Jane raised his eyebrows. "Really? I've always found Courtney Cox more alluring, myself."

Cho sniggered. He muttered "Well, of course," under his breath. Rigbsy shot again. He missed, finally. It was Jane's turn.

Jane leaned over the table, still holding his pool cue the wrong way. Cho quipped, "Hey, Rigsby, are you gonna teach Jane how to shoot like you did the boss?"

Jane laughed. "Oh yeah. 'Lisbon, I'm going to put my hand on your back now. Please don't cut it off.'"

Rigbsy rolled his eyes. "Shut up. You would have been the same." He paused. "Well, Cho would've been. Jane, you've got a death wish."

"And yet, I'm still alive." He shot. The white ball didn't hit any of the others around it. Cho and Rigsby laughed at him. Jane laughed, too, good-natured. He never sulked.

It was after two. Rigsby was drunk. Cho was, too, but hid it well. Jane was sober, laughing at the two of them, relaxed. Rigsby wished Lisbon were here, but also enjoyed that she wasn't.

It was just them, they were just boys.

***

Next Chapter: "Jane wasn't at home."


	19. Home

_**Okay, this chapter is a more depressing one. It's Jane finding out about Lisbon's family. I had trouble with it, because Lisbon's so witholding, and I wanted to stay true to that, but I wanted her to talk to him. So I thought maybe she would talk about it if she thought it would help him in some way, and so a chapter is born. : ) Please review.**_

_**I also don't know how long Lisbon's father has been dead, so I made something up.**_

***

_Early July, 2008_

Jane wasn't at home.

He slept there most nights, or at least went there during the hours that normal people slept. Or if he didn't go there, he would drive his car around, going everywhere and nowhere, or he would take late-night walks that led him miles away from his home.

One night, he discovered the possibility of staying in the CBI building. You would have thought that there was some sort of alarm on it—that there was some way of preventing unhinged consultants such as himself from wandering in and lounging on the couch at three in the morning. You would be wrong. There was usually no one at the front desk to stop him, and if he swiped his ID at the front door, he could get in without issue. And so he did.

He was laying there this night, looking up at the ceiling. The squad room was dark—shadows draping over the Rigsby's messy desk, weighed down by papers and any number of other random things that he didn't understand—and Cho's desk, across from it, which was always completely clean and wiped down. Lisbon's office, always spotless and devoid of personality, looked even more featureless in the dark.

He thought he might go home later; he thought he might not. It didn't matter, this was a no-sleep night. He had separated his Insomnia sleep into three categories—no sleep nights, semi-sleep nights, and the very rare good sleep. This was a no sleep night if he'd ever met one. He was cocooned in tired, blurry, watching and listening from the bottom of a well. Like he was floating somewhere above himself.

He heard a distant stumbling on the stairs. A woman, most likely, it sounded like high heels. Slow and deliberate, probably clinging to the railing, plodding up the steps toward him. It was growing closer, and he didn't move.

A familiar head of dark hair appeared, his boss, walking slowly and deliberately in heels, trying not to stumble. Though he had an inkling that it wasn't the heels that were making it hard for her to walk.

"You been drinking, Lisbon?" He asked, half opening his eyes.

She jumped about two feet in surprise, snapped her head around to the couch to see him laying there, and rolled her eyes. "What the hell are you doing here, Jane?"

He closed his eyes. "I think the better question is, what are you doing here? And you didn't answer me. You've been drinking?"

"So what if I have?" Lisbon was quick to fierce independence, brisk defensiveness. "Are you my mother now, Jane?"

"Touchy, touchy. You haven't been drunk in a little while, huh? Over a year?"

The look she shot him was deadly, though it was undercut by her swaying forward and having to grab onto her office door knob to steady herself. "I drink. Sometimes."

"Doubt it," he said briskly. "You're too little to hold too much," he continued. "And besides, when we all went out that time, your margherita tasted like something I might get from an Ice Cream truck." There was no need to tell her what time he was referring to. Lisbon almost never went out with the rest of them. She always said it was too unprofessional.

"Sit," he said, motioning at the couch. She looked amused.

"You're taking up all the space."

He didn't sit up, but he moved his legs to one side to make room for her. "You can fit," he said, cheeky. She shook her head.

"I'm going in my office."

"Good luck getting the key in the door."

She rolled her eyes at him, conceeding the point, and sat down, careful not to touch any part of his legs stretched out behind her.

"Are you going to tell me what you're doing here?"

She crossed her fingers. She didn't look up. "Jane, you're a smart guy. I'm sure you can figure it out. It's not rocket science."

"I mean, I know you're drunk." He remained laid back on the couch, a cocky grin lingering on his lips. "And I know you don't want to drive home. And you don't have cab money, or anyone to call to drive you."

She nodded. "So then stop asking me questions you already know the answers to. You know I hate that."

He did. He'd learned that a while ago—he used to ask her basic questions that he knew the answers to just to gague her reaction, to get more about her from that. He'd done that for a while, until she cornered him one day and told him to quit it, she hated when people did that. Her green eyes were flashing, her eyebrows raised, jaw set. Annoyed and imposing. He smiled briefly at the memory.

"I guess I was asking why you were there to begin with. It's not your style."

"No reason," she said, quickly. Too quickly. He looked at her eyes, for the first time in the half-dark. They were red. She had been crying. The image of her in his mind doing that—crying, actually crying, was inescapably tragic to him. It wasn't something she did, not often, he had certainly never seen it. Something had happened.

She looked up, faked a smile. "So what are you doing here, Jane? I have a reason. What's your excuse?"

He shrugged, turned his head to relax against the arm rest. "Didn't feel like going home," he said, with affected nonchalance.

"Why's that?" She leaned back, seeming to forget his legs were behind her. She blushed as her back came in contact with them, quickly scooted up.

"You can lay back if you want, Lisbon," he said, just to be obnoxious. "It's warm."

She ignored this. "You didn't answer me."

He cocked his head to the side. "You never have nights when you don't feel like going home?"

She shook her head. "No. I don't." She turned to look at him, smugly. "And anyway, you're evading. Answering questions with questions. Trying to look disaffected."

"Touche, Lisbon," he replied. "Where did you learn that?"

She raised her eyebrows. "From you."

He grinned again. "I didn't think you would condescend to learn from me, Teresa, I'm touched. Truly."

She rolled her eyes. "Don't get used to it. And _don't_ call me Teresa."

He closed his eyes again, briefly, before feeling Lisbon jab him in the knee. "Don't you think I forgot what I asked you. What the hell are you doing here at three in the morning, Jane?"

"I told you. I didn't want to go home. I thought you hated when people asked questions they already know the answers to," he mocked her.

For once, she didn't look annoyed, put off. She looked straight up at him, and gave it right back. "I guess I was asking why you didn't want to go home in the first place," she mimicked.

He grinned, sat up a little. She'd earned it. "I knew I wasn't going to get any sleep. And I hate going home when I'm not going to sleep."

"I thought you didn't mind so much. 'The night is magical' and all that?" She shot him a cheeky grin. It was adorable.

"Well, that it is. I mean, think about it. One minute, you're laying on the couch looking at the ceiling, peeking out the window, and the next minute your boss is there with you on the couch, and looking lovely, by the way."

He eyed her outfit, noticing it for the first time—she had obviously changed since work had ended. She was wearing jeans, like she sometimes wore to work, but a different kind—tighter, more alluring, pale blue—a small, enticing rip on her left knee. Very high black heels, and a simple fitted black tee shirt. Hair mostly up, but some hanging around her shoulders, thicker, wilder that usual. And make-up, charcoal shading around her eyes that made them look bigger, a little bit of gloss on her lips, black chandelier earrings. And as beautiful as she looked, something was definitely up. She wasn't the kind of woman to dress up, especially to go to the little hole-in-the-wall bar down the street. She was trying to forget something.

She rolled her eyes at him. "Thank you," she said, just to throw him off.

He gave a gurgling laugh. "No problem."

"So what's wrong with your house when you can't sleep?"

He considered lying, he considered evading, but his face didn't change. "When I'm there, and I'm not sleeping, it's—closer."

She looked at him solemnly, and waited for him to continue.

"And I always end up in... that room. With the smile." He voice was a curious mix of grave and genial—a combination that only Jane could pull off.

Lisbon looked confused at first, and then she didn't. She looked horrified. "You mean... you still _live_ there?" She exclaimed, unable to keep the incredulity from her voice. She regretted it in the next second, he saw that, and he put his hand on her shoulder to reassure her. "I'm sorry," she said, in a softer voice. He shook his head. He didn't mind. He knew it was strange. And more than that, he knew he should move the hell out of there.

"Don't worry about it. I know it's weird."

She looked very somber then, her pretty face exagerrated by the dark and the heavy make-up around her green eyes. It was awkward time to be struck by it, but there it was.

She spoke again, very tentative, as if her voice was enough to break him. "Why don't you move?"

He shrugged, remembering what she had said just minutes before, about him trying to look disaffected. She had been onto something. "I don't know."

She just looked at him. She had a way of waiting him out when he talked.

"I mean—I don't know." He put his head down. "If I could move, I would. But I can't." His voice came out, cracked. He was surprised at himself. "I don't know why I can't. I wish I did. Because if I did..." He stopped. She kept her eyes fixed on him. "If I did, then I might know how long I had to do it. If I... had a future. And if I didn't, I could just resign myself."

He looked off, away from her. She breathed in, breathed out. She wrung her hands, looking like she was trying to work something out in her head.

"I know why you can't." Her voice was gentle and musical, breaking through the dark. He turned to face her, eyes questioning. She sighed.

"I can't believe I'm going to tell you this." She stopped. "Okay." She leaned back now, into his legs, not seeming to notice. She put her head against the back of the couch, lower back barely skimming and warming his shins.

"I had a good childhood," she said, catching him out of nowhere, but he nodded. He didn't think it was true, but he sensed there was something to the story. "You know, my parents were like the California Ozzie and Harriet. Minus the twin beds. We did everything together. We were that family."

She paused again, already seeming to regret speaking. She forced the words out, as if against her will. "But then my mother died. Hit by a drunk driver. I was thirteen." He was waiting for the story to connect, saying nothing, struck by the novelty of her sharing with him. "And my dad, he just—" She broke off, looked down. "He didn't know what to do without her. He drank. All the time, and I—I took care of my brothers, and him--he just slipped away. I was so angry at him, for such a long time, for not being strong enough. Like we didn't miss her too, like the world had ended, like we weren't--" She took another breath, shook her head, having gone off track. "And then he died, ten years ago."

He caught something in her face, tying in the swollen red eyes. "Ten years ago today," he said, not a question.

For once, she didn't question how he knew that. She took a shaky breath, and nodded. "Yes. And we got older, and all of my brothers left home. Moved far away from here, just couldn't _wait—_couldn't stay here. But I stayed. I couldn't move. None of them live here anymore—one's in New York, Chicago, New Orleans. But I can't leave."

He saw the connection, at last. "And why can't you leave?" He asked, his voice very low.

She looked straight at him. Chin shaking, but eyes dry. "It's too much like leaving them. Like if I go—I'll erase them. Erase _us, _when we were happy. I'm the last thing that's the same." She bowed her head. "And that's why you can't move, Jane. That's why."

He turned it over in his head, unable to exactly place what to do with it, but being able to place one thing. "Thank you for telling me, Lisbon," he said. He knew it wasn't easy for her, but she thought telling him might help. And for Lisbon, who guarded her personal life almost as fiercely as he did—it was the nicest thing she'd ever done for him.

He tried to summon a grin, but couldn't. "Come on," he said, trying to break her from her reverie. "I'll drive you home."

She summoned the smile he couldn't. "No thanks, Jane. I didn't drive home like this because I didn't want to die tonight. Getting in a car with you would be counterproductive to that point."

He grinned and stood, pulling his legs from behind her. He gently tugged her to her feet. "Come on," he said, his voice still softer than usual. "You don't want to stay here."

She stood slowly, doubled over a little, and almost fell. He caught her by the waist, and quickly removed his hands. He guided her out, down the stairs, with one hand hovering near the small of her back, not wanting to touch too much, not pushing his boundaries like he would if she was sober. She should go home, he thought. She was going to cry tonight, he was sure of it.

And he was equally sure that she would rather cry in her own bed than the CBI building.

***

Next Chapter: "Lisbon was scared."


	20. Scared

_**Hey! I'm sorry about the obscenely long break. It won't be as bad next time. This Chapter is the first time they fear for Lisbon's life. Told from all points of view. Please R&R. **_

***

_Mid-July, 2008_

Lisbon was scared.

She had never been truly terrified before, not really. She had a dangerous job—a CBI agent, solving murders, facing down all manners of unhinged and violent people. But she had never been in danger before, or at least not like this—inadequate and unable to defend herself. She had never been helpless. She had never considered the world the next morning, or later into the night, thinking that she would not be in it.

Not like right now.

She was sitting on a crate in an empty warehouse. Minutes before, she had split them into two groups to search for a suspect—Rigsby and Cho, Jane and herself. She and Jane were supposed to poke around the back, and when Jane had wandered off into the distance like he always did, like an idiot, she'd gone in alone. And of course, the guy was there.

He'd come up behind her, caught her in a headlock. Took her gun. Lisbon was a formidable woman, she knew that about herself, but she also knew that she wasn't formidable physically. At five foot two, taking her down wasn't a difficult job.

She could hear the gathering crowd outside—the traffic, the helicopters. The negotiator reading his scripted lines through his standard-issue bullhorn: "No on has to die here. I can help you." The whole damn cavalry.

And her, like a bad movie—the young woman who goes poking about by herself in a haunted house, who hears a gunshot upstairs and a body hit the floor and asks, "I wonder what that was?" creeping up the stairs like an idiot, making the people in the theater scream at her, "Don't! Don't go up there!" Holy mother of god, she was that girl.

She was wearing a grim smile now, imagining her three male colleagues trying to function without her. Probably terrified. She wasn't maternal, but she knew she had that influence on the rest of her unit. She could imagine them jumping around like little white rabbits who had lost their mother as much as she could imagine anything.

She laughed, then, as he stood over her. He was holding her gun, and his, and he looked at her with bewildered eyes. She remembered her mother's funeral suddenly, when she was thirteen—the body in the coffin had looked so little like her mother—so pale, so devoid of life, that she'd actually laughed. She laughed now, as she did then, because it came to her naturally—because there wasn't anything else to do.

***

Rigsby was new.

He had been here five months now—had mostly gotten the hang of the CBI. He'd learned not to make bets with Jane, or at least not with money he couldn't afford to lose; he had picked up a few of Cho's interrogation techniques. He'd learned that if he valued his life and his limbs he'd better knock before going into Lisbon's office, and he'd also learned that somehow, this rule didn't apply to Jane.

But he still felt new now, right now, standing outside of an abandoned warehouse with his gun drawn. He felt more new and more inadequate than he had on his first day, when he came in to be met by Lisbon, who was brisk and business-like, when he'd been terrified to pick a desk. More than that, he felt like a child—like a third-grade boy wanting to cover his eyes and ears, to curl into a ball until it was all over. Wide-eyed, and stunned.

His boss was probably no more than one hundred feet away from him—through the warehouse walls, being held hostage by some suspect they had chased down. He couldn't even imagine it.

Lisbon was stern, and forbidding. And a hell of a lot more imposing than he was, that was for damn sure. And that was what got him. It could have been him, could have been any of them, but it was _her_—and that just seemed impossible, like the universe had gotten it wrong, because what man alive could contain his boss? He was realizing for the first time just how dangerous his job was. If it could happen to the boss, it could happen to anyone. He was no Lisbon, not at this point in his career, and he wasn't sure he ever would be. His boss was in a league all her own.

Beside him, Cho stood with his gun drawn, looking focused, but had begun fidgeting, shifting his weight foot to foot. Jane's expression was grave, it was blank. He wasn't making jokes. He wasn't a cop, and so had been forced to wrangle with the swat team to be able to get in close. He looked drawn and tired.

There was a window, and a clear shot at the suspect, though far away, and risky. They were lining up, the snipers were talking about taking the shot.

And Rigsby had to struggle to keep his eyes open—to force himself to watch, to absorb it like an agent should. He almost couldn't bear to look.

Risgby was new, and young. He stood there in the open air and set his jaw, tightened his fingers around his gun; trying to look like a grown man, trying to look like he actually belonged there.

***

Cho wasn't himself.

He felt oddly removed from himself, tearing around the grass outside, and gripping his gun so tight, like he'd drop it if he didn't.

He had known Lisbon the longest, even if he didn't know her the best. She was his boss, always had been, but had always trusted him like an equal, treated him like a colleague, if not exactly like a friend. They had always just mutually existed, acknowledging each other here and there, but mostly not, mostly crisp and professional. Almost never personal.

And that was what shocked him now, about being outside while his boss was being held hostage inside—the vehemence he felt, down to his bones, taking him over. He had never felt anything so personal in his life. He had never felt this precise blend of terror and rage. He'd never really felt anything, if this was what feeling things was like.

Jane was next to him, looking lost, looking guilty. His eyes were huge, his mouth turned downward, the lines in his face more pronounced. Cho didn't think of speaking, before it burst out of him. "What the hell, Jane? Stop looking so damn tragic."

Usually, this would have made Jane smile. Usually, almost everything made Jane smile. But this didn't. Jane simply said, in a low voice, "I was supposed to be in there with her."

Cho was impatient. It crept up and almost bit him, as he spit out, "Yeah, alright, Jane. I'm sure you'd be doing a bang-up job in there protecting her now, what with your gun and badge, right?" He rolled his eyes. Sarcasm never left him, even in his darkest moments. "I don't want to hear a bunch of crap about how this is your fault, alright? Stressful enough without you looking so damn tortured. Especially about something that's not even your fault. And trust me—enough things are your fault without you taking on shit that isn't." He was surprised that this came out of him, but not sorry.

Jane did smile then. He nodded his head. He turned back to the window on the third floor, where they could see a vague outline of the two of them—Lisbon sitting on something, a shadowy figure pointing a gun at her. Even from here, Cho couldn't miss the hunch of Lisbon's shoulders, and, even though he couldn't see it, he just knew that her green eyes had darkened, had become grave.

The snipers were in position. They were ready to shoot in the next several minutes, if given the order. And Cho paced, and paced, and paced some more, trying to get his head in order, his cells in line.

He heard himself speaking again, to everyone, to no one: "I swear to God." He paused, gritted his teeth, and felt the venom in his own voice. "I swear to God, if her touches her, if he hurts her--" He broke off again, voice cracking—"He's a dead man."

The other two turned to look at him, momentarily quizzical, as if they'd never heard him speak before. He didn't know where that came from, but he felt it still, felt it hard. They didn't question him. They both nodded the affirmative. Rigsby gritted his own teeth.

"Damn straight."

***

Jane was numb.

It wasn't an unusual feeling for him, not really. He spent his life watching the world from inside his own little cocoon, dissociated about as easily as he did anything. He was good at it. Had always been, but especially in the years after losing his family.

What was unusual was the feeling of slow motion—of watching the world unravel in front of him, and standing and waiting and watching it go by. Being unable to reach out and change it, like he normally could. Jane was infamous for his ideas, which generally came to him in the most trying situations. He didn't have any ideas now. He stood and watched, like the rest of them. He waited and almost prayed.

Cho was next to him, wearing a look of uncharacteristic fierceness, pacing and clutching his gun. Under pressure, Cho became the opposite of Jane—he felt everything. He became someone else, a force to be reckoned with, dripping with machismo. He wasn't like Jane, who became some heightened version of himself—Cho turned into someone else entirely. If he was finding this out on some other occasion—_any_ other occasion, Jane would have found this fascinating. As it was, it was a fleeting observation, there and gone in the next second, not mattering much.

Rigsby was on his other side, and much more difficult to get a read on. He kept opening and closing his eyes, clutching his gun hard and loosening his fingers, only to tighten them again. He was trying to keep up a façade, and was succeeding at it, but for occasional lapses, chinks in his armor.

And there was Lisbon, who he couldn't see, but could see more clearly than any of them—her wide eyes, her pale skin flushing, wanting to cry but refusing to, trembling. He thought she would be as she was a few weeks before, when she'd stumbled drunk into the office at three in the morning on the anniversary of her father's death. There was something deep there that she almost let him see, but never did. That was her, that was his boss, that was Teresa.

Years before, he had never been scared for his wife, not really. He thought about her now, how he had never even considered the idea of her being in danger. He had never truly been scared for anyone, as he was now, paralyzed into silence, into some shell of himself. He had never been this before.

He had never been scared of losing someone before it actually happened, imagining a world in which Teresa wasn't there—her perpetual challenging presence, the occasional glimpses of softness, her quick smile, her green eyes. He considered the idea of her not being there for a moment, and then stuffed it back down, watching the scene unfolding in front of him like he wasn't really there.

Analytical. The snipers were their best shot, and they were in position, preparing to shoot in the next thirty seconds. Cho was breathing hard, like a drowning man, and Rigsby was fixed in place, eyes huge with a trembling mouth. There was the smell of the gasoline from a nearby bus, and the sound of Minelli's throaty voice as he burst onto the scene. The beating of wings from a helicopter hovering above them, and a shot. A sniper's shot.

A shot through the window of the warehouse where Lisbon was sitting, slicing through the glass.

He was numb, he was detached, he was analytical.

But he still closed his eyes.

***

Lisbon was alive.

She kept saying this to herself as she walked out—as she passed the throngs of waiting Police Officers and Agents waiting by the front door. She was alive, he was not. She was walking into the warm July air, feeling her own elbows and neck and face and telling herself, _I'm still here._ The bullet that had crashed through the window hadn't hit her. It had hit him.

The other three in her unit weren't standing at the front door with the crowd. They stood back a ways, waiting for her to make it through the crowd of people to find them, numb and shell shocked, leaning against a brick wall near the street. They wore similar faces, the tired expressions of seeing their fears realized but not executed. Drawn faces, but relieved as if they too had survived.

Rigsby came to her first. He barreled towards her without any preliminaries, and hugged her hard. On the surface it surprised her, but viscerally it didn't—Rigsby wasn't closed off, he wasn't shy. It didn't occur to him to hide himself. He was relieved, he showed his relief. It was that simple.

He almost clung to her, crushing her, his fast-beating heart slamming into her shoulder, breath ragged. It wasn't uncomfortable—she felt herself breathing again, like she was alive, like she was a person. He pulled back and didn't look at her, took his place back on the wall. It didn't occur to him to be embarrassed at the outpouring of emotion, and it didn't occur to her either.

Cho was next. He briefly squeezed her elbow, ran one hand down her arm. Unlike Rigsby, who had hardly looked at her at all, his eyes were fixed on her. It was so uniquely Cho—not touching too much or too fast, but talking with his bottomless dark eyes. She could sense some franticness there, some wild relief, a combination that only Cho could pull off, and never in too many words.

Cho backed away then, though he didn't go back onto the wall—he stood near her, hovering close by, and kept staring at her like she would vanish if he didn't.

Jane was last, and ambled over to her. He didn't hug her like Rigsby did, or stare like Cho. He stood for a moment, studying his feet, and looked up suddenly. He pushed a piece of her dark hair out of her eyes, and didn't move his hand back. There was a long, lingering moment of his thumb kneading her neck, almost caressing her cheek. He rested the hand on her shoulder, and found his voice.

"Teresa," he said. "You're making me old." His voice was a perfect pitch of dead pan and ironic.

It was funny, but there was still some intimacy there—the use of her first name, but that wasn't it. His palm was warm on her shoulder, and she swallowed, for once didn't correct him. She suddenly remembered what he'd said on that late night in Oregon, in the hotel.

_Something tells me there will come a time when you won't mind it so much._

_Well, until that time comes, which I doubt it will, don't._

She smiled. She reached up to move his hand, gently removed it from her shoulder, and placed it at his side. She didn't shrug him off like she normally would have.

She turned to see the other two were looking into the distance, not wanting to intrude on a moment which seemed intensely private, though on the surface, nothing so strange had happened.

"I'm going home," she said. "I've earned some sleep today." The others stood, motionless. "I expect all of you in by eight tomorrow."

They all smiled. They nodded. Cho asked her, "You need a ride, boss? I know you don't want Jane to drive you, you've already survived one life-threatening event today, but I don't mind."

She laughed, and it felt good. Jane cracked a grin and gave Cho a fake-punch in the shoulder. "I'm okay," she said. They looked at her, and she laughed. "Really."

She drove away a few minutes later, and they were still there, on the wall, watching her, waiting for a clue. She might have been okay, she might not have been. But she smiled at the look of the three of them, all good-looking, intelligent men, looking after her like little boys. She had already known she needed them, but had never realized how much they needed her.

As she drove by them, she raised a hand to wave.

They did the same.

***

Next Chapter: "Jane was always right."


	21. Right

_**Woo hoo! Chapter 21. I'm getting toward the end. Yay. This chapter first came from something Cho said in "A dozen red roses." A suspect asks Cho why he's being held, and Cho says simply, "because Jane says you know stuff." The suspect says, "And that guy is always right?" And Cho responds, "Pretty much." And so a chapter idea is formed. And then this chapter took an entirely different turn than I anticipated. There's a weird Cho/Lisbon vibe in here, along with my typical Jane/Lisbon. Just go with it. That's all I'll say.**_

***

_Early August, 2008_

Jane was always right.

It had taken Cho the better part of a year to truly accept it, but he finally had. Rigsby hadn't yet—he'd known Jane for about six months, and was still in denial. Cho recognized the reluctance to accept it, to entirely believe it—it went against everything he had ever been taught about life being unpredictable in almost thirty years. No one could be right all the time. But if Jane was ever wrong, Cho had never witnessed it.

It was a Wednesday night; they had just solved a case. Jane had cracked the investigation wide open with some wild theory he'd come by through some meaningless observation or another, as he tended to do, and Cho realized that he wasn't even surprised anymore. He was sitting with Jane and the boss, pretending to work. Rigsby had gone home already. Cho studied Jane, considering him.

"You want something, Cho?" Jane didn't even look up. Cho didn't know how he did it.

Cho shook his head. "I was just thinking."

"Care to share?" There was a thunderstorm outside, water spraying the windows, seeming to shake the walls.

Cho shrugged. "I was just wondering how you do it. If you're ever wrong."

Jane gave an amused smile, and Lisbon re-crossed her legs in the spinning chair across from Cho, gripping her pen tighter, as if trying to tune them out.

"I'm always right," Jane stated, baldly.

Lisbon's head suddenly shot up, annoyed. "You are not."

Jane's grin got wider. "No? You ever known me to be wrong?"

"Just because I've never seen it doesn't mean it doesn't happen."

"No?"

"No. I've never seen you put that hair gel in your head in the mornings, either, but I know that happens."

Cho grinned. Jane was very sensitive about his hair gel. Lisbon had a fun, quick wit when she chose to show it off, which was rare.

"I've already told you, Lisbon, it's water."

"Oh, is that what they're calling it now?" She shot Jane a quizzical smirk, and looked back down at her work.

Jane laughed. "Okay. I'll have to prove it, then. Because I really am always right." He paused, deliberating. "I'll tell you and Cho about yourselves, something you've never told me, and you can tell me if I'm wrong."

Lisbon put down her pen. She gestured for Jane to start. Cho had noticed before that Jane was the only person for whom Lisbon ever stopped working.

"I'll start with Cho." Cho wheeled his chair around to sit beside his boss, in front of Jane, who was leaning against Lisbon's office door. He was drinking a cup of tea. The two watched him as if he were some mildly interesting program on late-night cable TV.

"Cho was going to be a lawyer." Jane continued. Cho raised his eyebrows. It was left field, though true. "He was interested in law, always had been, studied it for a while in college. But then he suddenly realized it wasn't for him."

"And why wasn't it?"

Jane shrugged. "He doesn't have the personality for criminal law. He's not gritty, abrasive enough. He's a thinker, and being a detective lets him indulge that."

Cho swiveled in his seat, face blank, granting him nothing. Jane turned to face Lisbon.

"And Teresa here--" Cho watched her flinch at the usage of her first name. "She thinks she's growing old before her time." Lisbon looked at him, face an unreadable mask. "She wants to hold back time. She's not the kind of woman who obsesses over how she looks, not for the sake of vanity, but fears looking in the mirror one day, and wondering where all the years went."

Jane leaned back against the door, looking annoyingly pleased with himself. "Am I wrong?"

Lisbon recovered first. Lisbon always recovered first. "Unimpressive," she said flippantly. "Run of the mill. I would have expected more, Jane."

"Is that so?"

Cho picked up. "Absolutely. It's going to take better than _that_ to make us believe you're never wrong."

"So I see," Jane replied, feigning a grave tone. "What will it take?"

Lisbon considered. "It'll take—something I don't know about myself. Something that--" She broke off.

"Surprises me," Cho finished her sentence. She hated when Jane did it, but it never bothered her when Cho did. She grinned at him. Suddenly they were partners. "It'll take something I've never thought of. Something seemingly irrelevant. Maybe something that embarrasses me."

Jane nodded slowly, thinking hard.

"And then maybe I'll _consider _the_ idea_ of_ entertaining_ the notion that you're always right," Lisbon put in.

"Hmm." Jane's voice rumbled in his throat. He sipped his tea, and released a breath. Jane never rushed. It was infuriating. He never rushed, and yet he was always out in front of everything, miles ahead. He seemed to come upon an idea and grinned, which made Cho nervous.

"Okay," he said, "How about this? Lisbon, Cho is exactly the kind of man you normally date."

It was a good thing Cho wasn't Rigsby. It was a great thing Cho wasn't Rigsby, because Rigsby entirely lacked subtlety. Cho could imagine him now, gaping, gurgling, stuttering at the two of them. Cho wasn't like that. He had the presence in himself to stay silent, to watch the exchange.

"Really." Lisbon never used more words than she had to.

Jane grinned. "Absolutely."

Cho chanced a sideways glance at his boss. She wasn't awkward, not with him. She wasn't embarrassed. She was too busy going toe-to-toe with Jane to even think about that. Lisbon crossed her legs and sat on them. She chewed on her pen. "Enlighten me."

"I thought you'd never ask. Cho is—reliable, dependable, steady."

Cho thought Jane was making Lisbon's type and himself sound awfully boring, but didn't say so.

"You've been looking for that since--" Jane paused here, as if trying to collect a good phrasing. "Since your teens."

So he knew. Cho wondered where Jane had come by the information about Lisbon's family. He hadn't thought he'd known.

"And Cho is laid back. Lets you take the lead, which you like, because you're accustomed to doing it. And his humor. You appreciate the dry, the sarcastic, because you've never thought you were funny." Jane gave a wicked grin. "And of course, Cho is a good-looking man." He cocked his head to the side. "Right?"

Cho's interest was piqued now. He looked at Lisbon. He cheeks were faintly pink. Huh.

She recovered, though more slowly than she usually did. "Interesting," was all she said, biting her lip. It was as if there were a great many things she had thought to say, but they had all sunk to the bottom, and "interesting" was the only thing left afloat.

Jane smiled wider. He was enjoying himself. Cho was beginning to wonder just what he'd gotten them into. "It is interesting. And right now, you're mentally going through all the men you've dated, and realizing that Cho would fit right in."

Lisbon's face was neutral, a poker face. She looked up at Jane without fear. Not wanting him to win. Cho recognized the battle of wills. It never seemed to stop. "That's what you think, huh?"

Jane's eyes sparkled. "That's what I know. And that's not all. It turns out, Cho, that Lisbon here is exactly the kind of woman you generally find most attractive, as well."

Before Cho could respond, Lisbon cut in. "Is that your game? Trying to make us uncomfortable? Everyone is everyone's type in your world, huh?"

Jane's face was unfazed. "Not at all. You aren't Rigsby's type in the slightest."

Lisbon let out a dark chuckle. "Gee, thanks."

"It's no bearing on your attractiveness, Teresa."

Her eyes narrowed at 'Teresa.' "I've told you about that."

"Right, sorry, Lisbon. I just meant, I'm sure Rigsby has noticed in some objective way that you're attractive. You just aren't the type of woman he typically dates. That's all."

Lisbon closed her eyes. "Shut up."

"Anyway, as I was saying. Cho, Lisbon's your type."

Cho wheeled backwards in his chair, determined to keep his cool, determined not to let his growing unease and shyness get the better of him. "Okay. How so?"

Jane grinned. "You don't know?"

"Why are you asking me?"

"You'd know better than anyone."

Cho shrugged. "Well, you know everything, right? Isn't that the whole point of this game? This is a spectator sport. No lifelines, no ask the audience. This isn't Who Wants to be a Millionaire. This is Jeopardy."

Lisbon snickered next to him. He kind of liked making her laugh. He looked over at her, she looked back at him. They both nodded, and turned around.

"Fair enough," Jane replied. "Cho, you've always been the smartest kid in school. Always. And you hate dating women who aren't challenging. Lisbon is." Cho hated how much fun Jane was having.

"Lisbon is tough, hard-nosed, and very, very smart. Ambitious, great at her job, so she wouldn't be clingy, which you hate. And she's not too girly. She's athletic, and you love that. Doesn't own a hundred pairs of shoes." Jane broke off to give an evil smile. "And beautiful, petite. You've always had a thing for petite women, haven't you, Cho?"

Cho laughed, he couldn't help it. "How the hell do you know these things?"

He thought about it. It had never occurred to him before now, but Jane completely had a point. He loved all of those things in women he dated, and Lisbon was all of those things. He'd never even noticed it. Even now, being in possession of these facts, didn't change how he looked at her. She was still Lisbon.

Jane continued as if Cho hadn't spoken, dark blue eyes gleaming. "Really, both of you would be great for each other. You both have a lot of what the other person wants."

The room was suddenly quiet. Cho had time to wonder again what he'd gotten himself into.

Lisbon shifted in her chair. "Well, that's a brilliant theory, Jane. Except that it has a hole so big I could drive your giant, overly inflated ego through it." Cho laughed, but noticed that despite the tough words, Lisbon had given herself up slightly to her discomfort.

"And that would be?"

"That would be the fact that I have neither the inclination or desire to be with Cho in any non-platonic sense. I don't look at him like that." She paused. "No offense, Cho, not that you aren't great."

Cho put up his hands. "None taken, boss." He turned to Jane. "Yeah, same. So I guess you're wrong. For once."

He and Lisbon shared a brief, triumphant glance, before quickly turning away.

"Not so. I didn't say you were attracted to each other. That would just be weird."

"You just said it!" Cho turned to Lisbon in outrage. "He just spent the last five minutes saying it!"

Lisbon rolled her eyes. "Yeah, Jane, what the hell?"

That stupid smile was frozen on Jane's face. "I said that you both possess attributes that the other typically finds attractive. Attributes alone don't equal attraction."

Cho shook his head. "And here he goes with the psycho-babble."

"No it makes perfect sense. We're all products of our environment. If you and Lisbon had met differently, the way you relate to each other might be different. As is, Lisbon, Cho will always be your employee, someone you fiercely protect from everything you can, but don't let in on a personal level, and Cho, Lisbon will always be the boss that you admire and respect, but are slightly fearful of. Nothing else. It's a bit sad, in a way."

"Oh yeah, missing out on a soul mate." Lisbon's tone was scathing.

"I don't believe in soul mates." Jane shrugged his shoulders. "I think that there are certain people out there that we can be happy with, and circumstance dictates who we pick, who we decide to spend our lives with."

"Ah." Lisbon was biting her lip again. She sucked her teeth. "That might simultaneously be the most jaded and the most optimistic thing I've ever heard you say."

"Absolutely."

Lisbon scooted a bit closer to Jane, and Cho doubted she was aware of doing it. "So you're saying I'm going to spend my life with someone like Cho, but not Cho, is that it?" She frowned, tugged at her lip. "That actually doesn't sound too bad."

Cho raised his eyebrows, but stayed silent. He rolled back in his chair to give them space. It was Jane and Lisbon now. He began to pack his briefcase, watching the two of them.

"Not necessarily. Likely, but not necessarily."

"Why not?"

"Well, that impulse, it's not—formulaic. It's biological. The anatomy of attraction, of lust. It's complicated. Especially for someone like you."

"Why me?"

"We aren't one-dimensional as people. We're whole, we're complex. And you're a complete person. More so than most people. More so than me."

Lisbon didn't say anything.

Jane sat on the desk now. He turned to face her. "And anyway, some of our most powerful infatuations are to people who aren't usually our type."

"And why is that?" Lisbon's voice was low, Cho could barely hear it. He maybe shouldn't be listening, but he couldn't help it.

"Because--" Jane stopped, his voice was low, too. "Because it's new. It's—exciting. It makes us feel young again, younger that we are." His voice dropped almost to a whisper. "And we all want that."

Lisbon nodded, and seemed to come back to herself. Cho was fascinated. He rarely saw her give up so much, even by accident. Even by asking questions. Jane brought something out in her, though he didn't know what, exactly, that was.

"Then what was the point of that little exercise? If everything is uncertain anyway?" Lisbon sounded like herself again.

"Everything isn't uncertain. Most things are predictable. And the point of that exercise?" He shrugged. Lisbon stood then, just as Cho was reaching forward to snap off his desk lamp. She bumped square into his chest, and blushed. Cho felt his cheeks warming, too. They were both woefully socially inadequate.

Jane grinned. "Maybe some personal amusement," he said.

Cho rolled his eyes. He started for the door, umbrella in his hand, hating Jane.

***

Next chapter: "Jane was a seducer."


	22. Seducer

_**Okay, so this chapter deals with Jane's propensity to seduce people. It is not my favorite chapter—I'm all caught up in the finale now (If you haven't seen it—go see it), which makes writing happy Jane fluff weird, considering how dark he was in that episode. The ep was a really interesting character development for Jane, seeing just how consumed he is with getting his revenge, that it's worth his own life and it entirely changed the Jane character for me. But I digress. Hope you enjoy this chapter.**_

***

_Mid-August, 2008_

Jane was a seducer.

He always had been, even when he was younger, even before he had entirely honed his skill. He loved the feeling of weaving a web, of getting other people under his spell, even for insignificant, fleeting moments. He loved the conquest—the chase that came with trying to figure someone out. It was addictive, but not like drugs or cigarettes; more like caffeine. It was something he did every day to wake him up, to make himself feel alive.

He had learned early that seduction was not always sexual—he seduced suspects to get them to confess—shamefully, he had seduced clients when he'd pretended to be a psychic. It was one of the few things from his old life that had carried over to his new one.

It was inherent, engrained in him; so much so that even his co-workers, who did not spend their free moments overanalyzing people, had noticed it. It was impossible not to, it was something as compulsory to who he was as his trademark grins, and his three-piece suits. Something they couldn't imagine him without.

He had changed a great deal since the loss of his family, he knew that. He was more grave now, more gritty, more withholding. He was irreversibly fractured, something important inside him had broken. He knew all that.

But he was still a seducer.

It was an August evening, the sun was setting through Lisbon's office window. She was turned toward it like she frequently was, but there wasn't anything in her hands; no pen or file to put across the pretense of work. No, she was just sitting there with her window open, drinking in the deep, rusty red sunset.

He dragged a chair around to sit next to her, put his feet up against her windowsill. It had the effect of sitting on some straw chair in an outdoor restaurant at the beach, like he could close his eyes and open them again, and find the ocean almost at his feet. A brief smile flickered across her face, she didn't turn to look at him full on.

"Should I even ask why you're in here, Jane?"

Their boundaries had become much different in the almost year since he had started. He thought with triumph on the first time he had barged into her office without knocking, almost a year before, when she had been angry at him. She had gotten used to him now, even though she had never stopped being affected by him.

He grinned. "I'm watching you watch the sunset. A sight so ravishing it puts the sunset to shame."

She rolled her eyes, but her cheeks were pink. They were a tell-tale sign of her discomfort, of his ability to get under her skin that he relished.

"Do you always have to do that?"

He grinned again. "Do what?"

She released a breath. A brief gust of wind brushed through the window and pushed her hair back. Her eyes were bright against the dim lights of her office. "You know what I mean. That… thing you do."

"You're going to have to tell me what you mean. I'm not a mind reader."

She didn't miss a beat. "Then what the hell are we paying you for?"

Quick on her feet. Lisbon was always quick on her feet—so controlled and so witty and so _different_. Such a play of beautiful contradictions. When he was younger, she would have been someone he would have loved to have in his trophy case. A testament to his skill—to be able to seduce someone so tough, someone so complex.

He never thought that he himself was very complex, and he still didn't now. When he was younger, he had been bright, and open, and had a love of getting over on people. That was basically him. And even now, he had changed entirely—he tried to put on a good face, but his main motivator was revenge, it was what drove him through his days, it informed most of the decisions he made. He didn't need a shrink to tell him about himself, it was obvious.

And Lisbon was different. She was closed-off and professional, a hard-nosed cop, but an incurable optimist—part stern boss, and partly another thing, another woman that he never got to see. He admired that, just as he would have admired it when he was twenty-one. She was challenging.

In that way, it was almost the same now. Maybe he wasn't trying to start a relationship, trying to get her into bed, but he frequently found himself trying to get to her. Seduction with words—weaving them around her, trying to summon her. The leap of accomplishment he got in those brief seconds when his seduction landed, the tell-tale widening of her bright green eyes. He loved it.

His boss was back to looking out the window now. He watched her again. Her hair was pulled back today, loosely, showing off the smooth planes in her cheeks, her graceful neck.

"Hey, Lisbon."

She turned.

"Remember that morning when we were in here, before eight? Alone, in the beginning of summer?"

She frowned, but nodded, unsure of where this was heading.

"I said the morning sun was the only lighting that did you justice." He closed one eye and squinted, considering her. "Clearly, I was incorrect. Something about the sunset makes you glow, Lisbon."

And there it was, the raised eyebrows, the widening eyes. "Does it," she said, not a question. Her voice cracked on the last syllable.

"Unquestionably."

She recovered that fast. Her eyes were back to normal, she was calm. "That's very nice, Jane," she murmured. Her voice was her own again.

And the moment was over, that was it. He wasn't able to seduce Lisbon entirely, he couldn't unleash his whole arsenal on her. He hadn't done that in years, since before he'd met his wife, but with most people, it wasn't required. Sixty percent of Jane's seduction generally worked over most people. It was not so with his boss.

He had to be at his best to get Lisbon, had to be poised on his toes, entirely there. She was much more confounding than she thought; much more enigmatic than he'd first realized.

And yet Jane liked it. He was a seducer. It was built into his nature, the love of competition, of the rush he got from tempting someone, the zipping excitement humming through his blood stream.

And Lisbon was the best partner he could ask for to that end—smart and saucy, with a bit of her own lure thrown in. She was almost seductive herself. He loved that, as much as he loved the idea of getting to people, going toe-to-toe with an equal, a laid-down challenge. He loved it all.

And more than anything, he found himself loving the fact that Lisbon's widening green eyes when he had gotten to her made him feel more like he was alive than anything had in almost five years.

***

Next Chapter: "Rigsby was curious."


	23. Curious

_**Okay, so my chapters are now taking forever. I'm sorry. I got sidetracked with a one-shot, and so I didn't work on this chapter for a long time. But I'm on Chapter 23! Almost done. This Chapter has the agents speculating on what Van Pelt will be like. Please review.**_

***

_Late August, 2008_

Rigsby was curious.

He had been the rookie for almost six months now. He was the one who had to stay behind and answer the phones; he had to research suspects on the computer, a task they all hated. More than half of the times that the unit had stayed late, it had been him who was forced to pick up dinner from the convenient store.

Not that the group didn't like him, didn't respect him, didn't treat him well. The CBI was too serious and too important to indulge in true hazing—once he had learned his way around, he was a part of the team, a distinct presence.

But still, he was a rookie.

That was until he heard the news—there was a new kid agent joining their ranks. Van Pelt. All at once, Rigsby would go from being the fresh-faced, golden-boy rookie, to a true, bona fide agent. And he was curious who the new agent would be, he couldn't picture another rookie besides himself.

He, Cho, and Jane were crowded around some form Van Pelt had filled out. Jane had swiped it from Lisbon's office without permission, a fact which made both Cho and Rigsby wary of touching it. There was nothing about who Van Pelt was on the form at all, just a run-of-the-mill consent form, with a signature.

"So, is this speaking to you, Jane?" Cho's eyebrows were raised. The question wasn't meant to be sarcastic, not really, but it somehow still was. It was a part of Cho that he never turned off.

"Speaking to me?"

"You going to tell us how the squiggles in Van Pelt's signature means his mother didn't love him?" Rigsby laughed, remembering Jane profiling his own signature, going on about his hyper-masculine German father before Rigsby even knew what Jane's job was in the CBI.

Jane cocked his head to the side. "Why do you think Van Pelt is a guy?"

Rigsby shrugged. He didn't know why. "I guess he doesn't have to be—I mean—you know what I mean. Van Pelt doesn't have to be."

Jane raised an eyebrow. "You're not entirely acclimated to female cops, are you? Your last unit was all men."

"I'm not—you know. I mean, women can be cops. Good cops, I don't mean they can't be." Rigsby couldn't quite get his words out—he turned to Lisbon's office, door closed and all the way across the room, and half expected her to jump through the glass and deck him. Lisbon, being talented but not in possession of supersonic hearing, did not look up.

"I didn't mean you were sexist," Jane replied, in a tone that was a bit more patronizing than Rigsby thought it had to be. "You obviously respect Lisbon as your boss, you even admire her. You aspire to be like her. I was just pointing out your telling usage of the male pronoun without any evidence to that conclusion."

Rigsby rolled his eyes. He hated how measured Jane's sentences were—thick and long and lofty, words carefully selected, silkily spoken. It was annoying. "You're stalling."

"I'm stalling?"

"You're supposed to be telling us Van Pelt's favorite color," Cho quipped, sitting back on top of his desk.

"Pink," Jane replied, "Although Van Pelt probably doesn't advertise it. She wouldn't want people to know she's as feminine as she is."

"How the hell do you get that from a signature?"

Jane grinned. One of those irritating, ear-to-ear grins. "It's what I'm good at."

"How do you know Van Pelt is a woman?" Rigsby scoured the sheet again, looking to see if there was some information on Van Pelt personally. There wasn't.

"The signature is clean, neat. The loops are wider, women write their letters wider than men. It's the kind of handwriting you take time to develop. Something women are more likely to do than men."

Rigsby and Cho both looked at him, confused, to which he explained, "You never saw the little girls in front of you in the fourth grade writing their names in the margins over and over, with the little hearts over the I's? Whereas men, we don't learn to write legibly until college. Some of us not even then," He added, glancing over to Cho.

"Shut up. My handwriting is not that bad."

"Okay, so Van Pelt is a woman. I'll give you that. If that's all you have, it's not up to your standards, Jane."

Jane took the paper, looked more closely at it. He considered. "She's young. No older than twenty-seven, I'd say."

Rigsby rolled his eyes. "And how--"

"Her signature is still legible. She hasn't developed it yet. And moreover, she's probably girlish, and quite attractive."

Rigsby considered. A new rookie didn't sound so bad.

Jane continued. "The way she writes her name—see what it says? G. Van Pelt. Like she's trying to abbreviate the name so she'll have less to write. But the way the name is written—neat, clear, easy to read—she obviously isn't trying to write fast. She's trying to disguise the fact that she's a woman—not lie about it, but not put it right out there. She's someone who's never been taken seriously, because of how she looks." Jane stopped, as if having stumbled on something. "And the name—Van Pelt. It's not a very California name, is it? The ethnic population with that name settled more in the Midwest, generally speaking. That—with her need to be taken seriously—I'm going to say she's from a small town. Not in California."

"And that she's girlish?"

Jane shrugged. "The letters just look girly." He paused. "So she's probably insecure, at least in small part. She's going to be a workaholic, very serious about proving herself, proving that she belongs here." He grinned. "And Rigsby here's going to have a crush on her. No doubt."

"How do you know she's my type?"

Cho laughed this time. "It doesn't take much to seduce Rigsby, I wouldn't think."

Jane smiled back. "That, Cho, is an excellent summation."

Rigsby clucked his tongue, annoyed. "You could be full of shit right now, Jane, and we wouldn't know it."

"Oh, come on, how many times have I been full of shit?"

"Well we wouldn't know, would we? Because we never call you on anything."

"Well, well. You can ask Lisbon here, I'm sure she knows a thing or two."

Rigsby turned behind him to see his boss leaving her office, a suspicious expression on her face. There was a slight crease of consternation in her delicate-looking forehead. "Ask me what?"

"Nothing," Rigsby said quickly, not forgetting that the form had been swiped from Lisbon's office. He quickly let go of it, not wanting to be the one caught holding it.

"Nonsense," Jane replied cheerfully. He turned to Lisbon. "We were just talking about Van Pelt."

The crease in her forehead deepened, she frowned. "Why?"

"I've surmised that Van Pelt is from a small town outside of California. Would I be correct?"

"And how have you surmised that?"

Jane ignored her. "And that she's very young. Is that true, Teresa?"

"Call me Teresa again, and I'll cut off your hands and feed them to you."

Jane grinned harder. The man had a death wish. Rigsby just didn't get it. "And that she's devastatingly attractive. Is that true, Lisbon?"

Lisbon rolled her eyes. "Ah, that's what this is about, huh? You three are all horny and looking for new eye candy?"

"Hey, don't put me in this," Cho replied, raising his hands.

"And what do you mean, 'new' eye candy?" Jane asked.

"What?"

"You said Van Pelt would be the new eye candy. Implying that she would be replacing someone else, who would be 'old' eye candy. Who is that?"

"No one."

Jane grinned, a mischievous grin. "Are you the old eye candy?"

"Shut up, Jane."

He reached over, and wrapped an arm around Lisbon's shoulders. She shoved it off, her eyes looked deadly.

"Well, you don't have to worry about being replaced or anything. No matter how attractive Van Pelt is. You'll always be my best girl, Lisbon."

Lisbon, surprisingly, smiled. "Oh, don't say that. You'll hurt Rigsby's feelings." She shot Jane a predatory look, a cheeky glint in her eyes.

"Seriously, guys, that's not funny anymore," Rigsby pouted. "Why am I always getting the woman jokes?"

"Anyway," Lisbon replied, "You'll meet the new agent soon enough. And I would greatly appreciate it if you three didn't plot on putting posters of Van Pelt in your lockers to do god-knows-what with. Especially since Van Pelt is a forty-five year old father of three."

She was gone then, heels clicking behind her, almost as fast as she had swooped in. The familiar scent of her cinnamon-tinged perfume lingered in her wake.

"You know what this means." Jane said, after she had disappeared into her office.

"That you were wrong, for once?"

"Not so," Jane replied. "Never that."

"Then what?"

Jane grinned. "Van Pelt is even more attractive than I originally thought."

***

Next Chapter: "Lisbon wasn't angry."


	24. Angry 2

_**So, this chapter happened much faster than I expected it to. It takes place during the pilot, directly after the first sequence, in which Jane gets the mother to realize her husband killed their daughter, and she shoots him. Please R&R.**_

***

_Early September, 2008_

Lisbon wasn't angry.

Not like she should have been. She'd let Jane out of her sight for a moment—one single, solitary moment—and the next thing she knew he was in the victim's house, and had gotten her father shot. Classic Jane.

And Minelli had come down on her, of course—she was the head of the unit, a senior agent, and she hadn't yet learned how to keep the consultant on a leash? What the hell were they paying her for? She'd kept her mouth shut, head down, counting the tiles in the floor, waiting for it to be over.

When it was, she stomped off, steaming, into the hallway. On a war path—hair flapping behind her, eyes flashing with the temper that had always been too close to the surface. It wasn't very difficult to make her angry, she knew that; it was always there, lurking close by, waiting to be pulled up.

She rounded a corner, coming upon the squad room. Cho was there, and Rigsby. Both quickly recognized the harsh edge in her face, the tell-tale sign of her growing wrath. It was never pretty. They both quickly found other places to be.

She sat at Cho's desk. She did this frequently, without even thinking about it. Cho didn't mind, and she was more comfortable sitting behind Cho's desk than she would have been at anyone else's. Jane had probably noticed this, but had never remarked on it.

She released a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. She was okay. The tension in her neck and shoulders relaxed; she closed her eyes.

Jane had been handed down a month-long suspension. Jesus. A _month._ The man just didn't think, he never _thought._ What about the rest of them, what about _her_? She stuck her neck out for him tens of times more than she should have, she vouched for him, she took major hits for him. And for _what_? He always had to do something stupid. He never stopped. He never would.

When she opened her eyes, Jane had magically appeared. He looked clean and pressed, eyes bright, like he hadn't watched a man get shot not hours before. He was packing his briefcase with the books and papers stacked on his desk. Jane almost never sat at his desk, he used it as a dumping ground for all his crap; it was always entirely coated with _stuff._

"It's not polite to stare."

She rolled her eyes. "You know, I don't remember signing up for 'Jane does social graces'? I don't have the thirty-dollar admission fee. Thank you, though."

Jane grinned. "Touche, Lisbon. Hostility with a hint of wit. Beautiful."

She sighed. The anger that had carried her into this room had dissipated almost as fast as it had come over her. She tried to hang onto it, but felt it slipping through her fingers, out of reach.

"What are you doing?"

Jane smiled, a warm, fluid gesture. She was even less angry. "Packing books. I have to have something to read if I'm going to be home for a month, right?"

She flinched. Annoyed though she was with him, as much as she knew he needed to be disciplined, Jane was not someone who should be left alone for a month, with nothing to distract him. The mental image of him there, alone, in the too-big house with the red smiley in his daughter's room was almost too tragic to bear.

He tilted his head to one side, grinned at her. "Ah, don't worry about me, Lisbon. Worry doesn't suit you."

She scowled, hating him. "I'm not worried."

"Okay, you're not worried." He resumed packing, silence fell. His desk became more visible. The chair he never sat in was entirely clear, and it knotted something up in her stomach. "But you're not happy," he said, dropping back into the conversation. "Why is that?"

She gave him an incredulous look. "Why is that? You got a man shot today, Jane! I got my ass handed to me by Minelli over something _you_ did for the millionth time, and because of that stupid shit you did, I'm loaded down by paper work! And why? Because you have the foresight of a goddamn eleven-year-old! So yeah! I'm not happy!"

He nodded. He bit his lip, looking contrite. "I'm sorry."

"You are not! You're full of shit. Don't insult my intelligence, Jane."

"Okay. So you're right, I'm not sorry about what happened to him. He deserved worse than he got. But I'm sorry I upset you." She chanced a glance at him. His eyes were gentle. He might have been sorry.

"You did not upset me. Upset implies that I'm being overemotional and irrational. I'm not upset, Jane. I'm pissed."

He chuckled. It was a low and throaty sound, and it melted something inside of her. "I don't think you are. Not like you want to be."

She spun around in Cho's chair, she tugged on her lip. She felt a familiar tired she always felt just after she'd been really angry. It was something like deflation. But it came on now much earlier than it usually did—she could carry grudges with the best of them, but it was already gone.

"Don't you read me, Jane. Not now. Common courtesy dictates you shut the hell up for at least a day, and take what gets dished at you."

He dipped his head reverently, giving a repentant nod. He looked for her face—he had this way of looking directly into someone's eyes when he talked to them that made him irresistible. "Okay," he replied. "Lay it on me."

But she didn't have much left. She was too tired. "Just—you're going to run out of chances eventually, Jane."

His face was smug. "With you? I doubt it. You're more attached to me than you want to be." He paused, and he suddenly looked sweet. "You could never run out of chances with me."

She should have been mad, but she almost blushed. "Don't think you can flatter your way out of this."

He was smiling his devilishly charming smile. "Never in the world."

She picked up one of the pictures from Cho's desk. It was of a little girl—one of his nieces—dressed up as a bumble bee. When she looked up, Jane was grinning at her, looking knowing.

"What?"

He shook his head. "No. No reading, remember?"

She rolled her eyes. Since when did he listen to her? Ever? "What?" She asked again.

Jane raised his eyebrows. "Cho's organized chaos makes you think of you." He picked up his briefcase, and an umbrella. "See you in a month, Lisbon."

She winced. A month. Christ. Why had she never realized until now how long a month was? She didn't permit herself to go further in her head, to reach the conclusion that a month really wasn't very long at all, but she hadn't gone without seeing Jane for more than five days in the entire year since she'd known him.

She wouldn't call him, they weren't friends like that. He wouldn't show up at her house and ask her to lunch. Cho and Rigsby might go out for drinks with him a time or two, but he would mostly be alone. She might text him occasionally, some three word message that said something stupid and deprecating like "you still alive?" But that would be it.

"Lisbon?" He called her out of her reverie, soft-voiced, with slanted, upturned eyes.

He was grinning wickedly at her from the front door. "I'll miss you, too," he said, winking, before walking out.

Lisbon leaned back in the chair, and closed her eyes. She was annoyed—truly, madly, unquestionably—but she couldn't muster anger.

That was what made her the most angry. That she couldn't have been angry if her life depended on it.

***

Last chapter: "Van Pelt was new."


	25. New 2

_**So here it is! The last chapter. I didn't go back to watch the pilot, so my timing in this chapter might be off. I also made some political references in here, because I realized the timeline lined up w/ the election, and I could SO see Cho being the one to follow it religiously, and I also saw him as being pretty liberal, so please don't be offended by that. ssPlease review, and thanks to everyone for reading this story, and keeping me going writing it. And I apologize for getting so lazy at the end. Also, I'm thinking of doing some longer one-shots (or maybe two-shots) based on some of these chapters at some point, so if anyone has a favorite chapter they'd like to see me do, please review and say. sThanks again!**_

***

_September, 2008_

Van Pelt was new.

Walking for her first day into the CBI headquarters—a formidable brick building with a menacing, black iron gate around it.

She was wearing a loose-fitting gray button down—her least sexy piece of clothing—with her dark red hair slicked back into a bun. No make-up or earrings, which she hadn't done since High School. Flat black loafers that pinched her feet, and looked like something she might have worn with a private school uniform in the second grade. She'd been going for sleek and professional, and had wound up looking like some strict Catholic schoolmarm. And not the sexy kind, either. The one who rapped your knuckles with a ruler when your shirt wasn't tucked in.

Her oldest sister had called her early that morning from Iowa to wish her luck. "You'll do great, Grace," she'd said. Van Pelt wasn't entirely sure this wasn't true, but she was fairly certain her sister didn't believe it. Her whole family hadn't gotten used to her being a cop—she was too sweet, they'd said, and too trusting. Certainly too wide-eyed and much too beautiful to ever really be any good at it. There were other things she could be, they said, more suitable to her nature. Like a Kindergarten teacher. Or a catalogue model.

They didn't understand or approve of her choice of profession, she knew, and so she appreciated the gesture from her sister, even if she didn't believe her own words of reassurance.

Breathe in. Breathe out. The young man working the metal detector smiled at her a little more than he smiled at everyone else. He told her that her unit worked on the sixth floor.

She could do this. She could do this. Push the six button in the elevator after the door closed. Her stomach seemed to drop with each floor, before hitting a resounding _thwack _when the elevator doors opened. Okay. Okay. Okay.

The room was almost empty, which surprised her. There was a young Asian guy at the desk to her left, face buried in the New York Times. Okay. She would go up to him. Easy enough. What would she say? _Hi, I'm Agent Van Pelt. It's my first day with the CBI, and I was told this is where I should report. _Okay. That worked. She practiced saying it in her head a few times, before walking over. She would say that.

"Hi… first day, um—am I in the right place? I mean, sixth floor--" Or… that.

The young guy looked up from his paper. He was fairly good-looking, well built, with closely cut dark hair, and eyes that looked perpetually ironic, like he was always telling a joke. He smiled at her. "You nervous?"

She was. "God, am I that obvious?"

He grinned again, shooting a conspiratorial look at her. "No," he replied. "On my first day I was so terrified that I ran directly into my bosses' boss, tripped over him, and spilled coffee all over his new suit."

Van Pelt smiled back. Okay. This guy wasn't bad. "And? What happened?"

He shrugged. "I'm still alive. Even if I pushed back any chance I had for a promotion by at least five years."

She laughed. He stuck out his hand from his sitting position. "I'm Cho," he said.

She shook it. "Van Pelt."

He narrowed his eyes. "_You're _Van Pelt?" He shook his head. "Shit."

She frowned, and shifted uncomfortably. Was it because she didn't look like he expected? That happened a lot. But his reaction was somehow different than that, like there was something else at work here. She didn't know if she should be offended or not.

"Sorry," he said after a second. "Jane—our consultant—well, he saw your signature before you got here, and said what you were going to be like." He broke off, and shook his head. "And that asshole is always right. He said, uh—you'd be fairly young. Female. Very pretty."

There was another moment of blank silence, during which Cho's eyes widened and he tried to recover himself. "I mean—that wasn't a come-on, it wasn't like that. It's what he said."

As he spoke, she felt herself relaxing. Somehow, his sudden burst of discomfort had put her at ease.

"No worries," she said. "Is Jane your profiler?"

Cho considered. "Sort of. He kind of observes, reads people, but he works cases, too, like a detective, but he's very much not a detective."

"Then what is he?"

Cho shrugged. "You'll understand better when you meet him."

"Oh. Is he usually here?"

"He's full time, yeah. But he got himself suspended a few days ago, for a month, long story. I think he's out of town, actually, I haven't been able to reach him. But he'll be back soon enough. Probably _too_ soon."

Cho got up, rounded the desk. Standing, he was a few inches taller than her, but not so tall, not towering over her. He left his newspaper on top of his computer. "Come on," he said. "Rigsby and the boss are in her office." He pointed to the glass door in the far corner of the room. "You can go knock, she's expecting you. I'm going to make some coffee. Want a cup?"

She shook her head.

"Tea?"

"No, thank you."

He nodded and turned off into a small kitchen. She walked closer to the door, and the two figures inside became more visible. Lisbon, whom she'd met briefly—very briefly—when interviewing with Minelli. He had been walking her down the hallway when they passed her, jogging off somewhere presumably important. They had shaken hands, and Lisbon was gone in the next second.

She was shorter than Van Pelt, and maybe five to seven years older. Her hair was loose around her shoulders now, and she was wearing a pair of fitted black pants and a plain white cotton top. She wasn't dressed provocatively, but she wasn't hiding her femininity, either—she had the look of a woman not to be trifled with.

The man towered over her, broad-shouldered with long limbs. He was a big guy, but not fat—attractive, with kind features. He was smiling.

"What?" He was saying. "It's a perfectly valid question."

Van Pelt remained standing there, frozen on the spot. She was supposed to walk in. She was supposed to reach out and knock on the door. But she couldn't.

"Rigsby," Lisbon said, "We're not getting case-closed pizza for the Tolliver case."

She was trying to look stern, Van Pelt could tell, but couldn't hide a certain amusement.

"Why not?" He looked mischievous. "It's your turn to buy, isn't it? You being cheap, boss?"

Lisbon rolled her eyes. "So Jane is out for a few days, and you're vying to be the most annoying?" She cocked her head to the side. "It doesn't work on you, Rigsby."

He was undaunted. "All I'm saying is, we get pizza when we close a case, right? And the Tolliver case is most definitely closed."

"Because Jane got the guy _shot_! That _so_ doesn't count!"

Van Pelt frowned. She assumed this was the "long story" behind Jane's suspension. But he got a guy shot? Just who the hell did the CBI have working for them?

"Well, we can mourn him between bites of cheesy pizza. I'll look really somber and grave, if that helps ease your conscience."

"I think we need to have some rules on what qualifies as closing a case to get pizza. I'm going to have to tack an addendum onto the case-closed pizza constitution."

"Like?"

"Like if Jane, or anyone, gets the murderer shot by his wife during any point in the investigation, the case closed pizza tradition is null and void."

Okay, now the story was really confusing. The murderer's wife had shot him? How could that be Jane's fault?

"Well, that's not fair. You can't just go adding on addendums. That's not how it works."

Shockingly, Lisbon erupted into a loud peal of laughter. It obviously surprised Rigsby, too—Lisbon didn't strike her as someone who laughed very often, and she got the distinct impression that Rigsby had never made her laugh before.

"Of course that's how they work! That's what they _are_, Rigsby! Add-on's!"

"How do you know that?"

She was still laughing. "It starts with the word _add_!"

Cho appeared next to her, holding a mug of coffee. She expected him to question why she was still there, why she hadn't gone in. But he didn't. He seemed to understand. He gently took her elbow, and guided her into the room.

Lisbon was still snickering, leaning over a file. Rigsby was standing close by but not too close, also laughing.

"Boss, Rigsby," Cho called from the door. "This is Van Pelt."

They both turned. Rigsby shook his head, firmly. "_You're _Van Pelt?" He sighed. "Goddamnit."

They all turned to look at him. Rigsby colored at his outburst. "I mean, our consultant--"

"She's heard the story," Cho broke in.

Lisbon looked at the clock. It was six after eight. "You're late," she said, her green eyes narrowed. Van Pelt wondered at how fast she had gone from amusingly busting Rigsby's chops, to being stern and imposing.

"No, she's not," Cho said. "I gave her a tour around the squad room. It was my fault."

She exhaled and nodded at him appreciatively, grateful for the lie. She could hardly tell her new boss that she was late because she was too paralyzed to knock on her office door.

Lisbon accepted the explanation with a dismissive nod. Risgby reached over to elbow Cho in the side.

"So you put down your newspaper to actually talk to someone? Amazing." He turned to Grace. "Cho is consumed by the upcoming election. Anyone who talks to him while he's reading about it gets their head bitten off."

"I'm not that bad."

"Oh, no?" Lisbon asked. "And just what were you reading about?"

"A recap of the convention. It's important!" Cho insisted. "I wanted to make sure I didn't miss anything."

"_That_, you don't have to worry about," Rigsby replied. "You're the only liberal democrat I know who watches _every single speech_ of the Republican Convention."

"You have to know what they're thinking."

Van Pelt laughed. Her father had been a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, and all of his daughters had become liberal democrats, perhaps out of rebellion. She wondered whether something similar had happened to Cho.

"Well," Lisbon broke in, "Cho, Rigsby, I need you to go type up your reports on the Tolliver case. Van Pelt--" she shrugged. "You stay with me, I'll show you around."

She did her best not to sigh. Okay. On the way out, Cho smiled at her, and pushed his chin up with his fist, as if to say, _buck up._ Rigsby gave her a once-over, not lasciviously, but admiringly. He ducked his head nervously, and shot her an awkward grin.

It was going to be okay, she told herself. The hardest part was over.

***

Cho and Rigsby were best friends. That became obvious on her first day, when they took her to lunch at a cute little sandwich shop downtown. They ribbed each other, gave each other a hard time, but there was an unmistakable affection under the surface.

Cho insisted that she get a Rueben, Corn Beef, with extra sauer kraut. It was the best sandwich she would ever have in her life, he said.

Rigsby paid for her, but not for Cho. She'd noticed already that he tended to watch her a good deal more than she thought strictly necessary—that in some sense, he was infatuated with her, in awe of her. And it was sweet.

On her third day, Lisbon walked up to Cho and, shockingly, laid a chocolate chip muffin on his desk. Even more surprising, Cho wasn't thrown off in the least. He grinned up at his boss, who muttered, "They were out of cupcakes." Van Pelt didn't ask.

She learned quickly that any mention of the consultant would illicit an eye-roll from the boss, and instant irritation. There was some sort of tension between them that was undeniable, even without Jane's presence, that she didn't understand. Not at all.

Rigsby would joke about calling Jane for this or that—when the coffee pot tanked, he mentioned that Jane had fixed it the last time, and he could call him for help.

Lisbon didn't even look up to issue her threat. "You call him, Rigsby, and it will be the last thing you ever do. Got that?"

On her fifth day, they caught a double homicide. A young woman and a doctor killed violently, with a big smiley face drawn in blood on one of the walls. Preparing to go to the scene, she heard Rigsby and Cho whispering heatedly to each other.

"We should call," Cho was saying.

"We absolutely should not! I'm fond of having all of my limbs, thank you."

Cho rolled his eyes. "Grow a pair, would you? It's Red John. It's his case. You know that."

"Then why not let the boss call?"

Cho shook his head, with finality. "I'm calling him. Jane's got the right to know, better than any of us."

"It's your funeral, man."

On her eighth day, she met Patrick Jane. She was standing around in the squad room, when her eyes fell on a good-looking blonde guy. He was wearing a gray suit with matching vest, which was weird, but somehow attractive. He didn't look like he belonged there, but he didn't seem to be looking for anyone, either.

"Can I help you?"

His eyes widened in amusement, and then settled on understanding. She was very confused.

"You must be Van Pelt." His voice was all genial and pleasant, but there was a hint of a self-satisfied smirk in his eyes. "I'm Patrick Jane."

"Oh!" She replied, feeling stupid. "I heard you were out of town."

"No, nowhere to go." The words were sad, but the tone was unchanged. She didn't know how to react to it.

"Oh, ok…" She'd skirt on past it. That would work. She tried to sound upbeat. "Did you pick a desk yet?" She gestured to one near the window. "I think that one gets more light."

More light? Seriously? Did she just say that?

But he grinned at her. "Sure, that one. More light, by all means." The smile was charming, it made him even more handsome.

She left the room then, going over the moment in her head. Somehow, Patrick Jane was very much not what she had expected. The trouble-maker who had just gotten a man shot; who profiled people based on their signatures; who made Lisbon's job hell. He wasn't at all what she pictured—he was a charming, fairly young, good-looking man. And yet she knew that there was something deeper there, something solemn about him lingering below the surface that she couldn't quite place. She didn't really know what to make of him.

But if anything, she thought— remembering his twinkling blue eyes, his honeyed voice, his self-assured, easy way of standing—Lisbon's tension with him made much more sense than she had originally realized.

***

Rigsby wanted pizza. Van Pelt had come to realize that Rigsby always wanted pizza. No matter what time of day it was.

Lisbon didn't. She said it was too fattening—and furthermore, she said, Rigsby was a walking heart attack sundae with hypertension filling and high cholesterol on top.

Jane didn't care. He would eat whatever you put in front of him, provided it was edible, or close to it.

Cho wanted Mexican, and Grace wrinkled up her nose at the thought. Something about the spice, the heaviness—it had never been one of her favorites.

"And what about the new kid?" Jane asked, turning to her. "What do you want?"

Lisbon cut in. "_Don't_ let him call you 'new kid', Van Pelt. I swear, you give him an inch, he'll never leave. I've learned that the hard way."

Jane looked injured. "That hurts my feelings a little, Lisbon."

"Yeah? Then go cry about it." Lisbon looked up at him, eyes flashing, practically spitting fire.

"Ouch," Cho put in. "And Lisbon gets one in under the gun. Beautiful." Cho and the boss shared a look then, of two people both in on some kind of conspiracy.

"Quiet," Rigsby said. "Your vote, Van Pelt?" He had a way of speaking to her that was more gentle than any of the others, but never sounded patronizing.

"You guys pick."

"Pizza!" Rigsby said. "Boss still owes us case-closed pizza for the Tolliver case."

"I do not!"

Jane grinned. "Well, why not? The case got closed."

"Don't you even _start_ on me, Jane."

Cho came to stand next to her, watching the three of them go at it. They both laughed as Lisbon turned to share an exasperated look with Van Pelt, which she returned. Cho took his cell phone from his pocket, and began dialing the Mexican place. He shook his head at Van Pelt, ruefully.

"Welcome to the CBI," he deadpanned.

"Cheers."


End file.
